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SOUTHERN HEARTS. 










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From “The Wife of Lothario ’’—Part II. 







Southern Hearts 


By 

FLORENCE HULL WINTERBURN 

- h 


Author of “ Nursery Ethics,” and “ From the 
Child’s Standpoint” 


New York 

The F.M. Lupton Publishing Company 
1900 

(vU z<- ■ 


TWO Copies received, 

Literary of Cofcgre&% 
Office o f the 

APR 1 6 Ifinn 



Copyright, iqoo, 

By THE F M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
Southern Hearts. 


FWS T OQPV, 

♦ 

“V*** *3 ; 


4 


MY VIRGINIA FRIENDS ; 

ESPECIALLY TO 

THAT ONE OF THEM WHO LIVES IN MY MEMORY 

AS THE 

TYPE OF ALL THAT IS SINCERE, 
HOSPITABLE AND KINDLY 
IN THE 

SOUTHERN CHARACTER, 

THIS VOLUME IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED 

/ 

BY THE AUTHOR, 


























I 








' 





















































* 



























' 










, 




















































































































' ' ^ 




EVERAL of the stories in this volume have 



O appeared in the magazines ; three are 
entirely new. For courteous permission to 
reprint thanks are due the publishers of “ Ro- 
mance, " “ Godey’s Magazine, " “ The Ladies' 
World," and “ The Independent." 




CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

When Love Enslaves n 

The Wife of Lothario 41 

Peter Weaver 153 

A Halt at Dawn 263 

Pink and Black 291 

Mrs. May’s Private Income 31 1 

The Laziest Girl in Virginia 339 

An Awakening 365 

Apple Blossoms . 389 
























































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WHEN LOVE ENSLAVES 


✓ 


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- 











SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


WHEN LOVE ENSLAVES. 


It was a beautiful morning of early October 
in the mountain region of Virginia. The old 
Fitzhugh homestead, now the property of an 
Englishman who had married the only daugh- 
ter of the impoverished family and bought in 
the home from creditors with good British 
gold, reared its dull red sides from amid a mass 
of sugar maples, larches and sycamore trees, 
and seemed with its widely opened doors, to 
proclaim an endless hospitality. The passer- 
by caught a glimpse of rambling out-houses 
whose chimneys shed lazy wreaths of smoke 
from pine wood fires, and if near enough 
he might have sniffed the pleasant odor of 
savory cookery from the rear building where 

13 


14 


SO UTHERN HEA R TS. 


Aunt Rose, the old-time cook, exercised her 
skill to please her epicure master, or tempt 
the less robust appetite of her young mis- 
tress. 

Mrs. Meeks stood at this moment in the 
middle of the sitting-room, her arms clasped 
over a broom, and her dark eyes gazing upon 
the floor in front of her. But her meditations 
had nothing to do with the rug where the 
broom rested, nor yet with the sun-lit slope 
of the Blue Ridges that extended in all their 
wealth of autumn beauty in front of the open 
windows. 

She was thinking of Mr. Meeks. He had 
just left the house, and as not infrequently 
happened, had left the sting of sharp words 
behind him. Yet, not exactly sharp, either. 
Overbearing, dogmatical words, not intention- 
ally cutting ones, for that was not the nature 
of the man ; but words that, said in his tone 
of command, bore heavily upon sensitive feel- 
ings. 

Mrs. Meeks was sensitive. That was evi- 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 


*5 

dent in every line of her softly rounded face, 
but the red lips that were curved in Cupid’s 
bow could straighten and stiffen when she 
was roused into one of her rare moods of de- 
termination. Mr. Meeks called these moods 
“ tantrums,” although his wife always spoke 
low and never lost her good manners. She 
had been reared by a grandmother who was 
one of the last of the Southern dames of the 
ancien regime, and would have died before 
she would have condescended to a rough and 
vulgar quarrel. 

It was the opposite trait in Mr. Meeks that 
hurt her. He was inclined to quarrel on 
slight occasion. He had not the least idea of 
his defect of temper ; it was always clear to 
him that he was in the right, and people who 
differed from him were wrong. They quar- 
reled with him. If people would do what they 
were told, he would never have cause to get 
out of humor. This lordliness of tone did not 
set ill on a man presiding at town meetings, 
and explaining to badly informed clients the 


J 6 SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 

intricacies of law. In these cases, suavity 
and a fine, melodious voice were the decent 
coverings of an egotism that wore less dis- 
guise when he was laying down the law to 
the little woman at home. 

It had been only an agreeable sort of mas- 
terfulness in the courting days. Then it had 
seemed to the romantic girl that yielding her 
will to a tender, protecting lover gave to their 
relation a delightful exclusiveness, as con- 
trasted with other relations. But in three 
years she had learned that what from one 
point of view is agreeable authority, be- 
comes from another point of view distasteful 
restraint. Besides, the fiber of the American 
woman which yields sweetly to suggestions 
of warmer wraps and the reserving of dances, 
is less compliant under complaints of neglected 
hose or bad management of fuel. 

Still, one could conceive of a demeanor that 
would have deprived even such fault-finding of 
its sting. But the most tender wifely forbear- 
ance will bristle with resentment when such a 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 1 7 

slight matter as a wrongly folded white tie 
calls forth allusions to a blissful and ante- 
marital condition in which hired landladies 
were attentive to a man’s comfort ; and above 
all, when ill-humor allows itself the parting 
shot from the doorway of a muttered “ darned 
fool.” 

Mrs. Meeks had watched her stout, well-set- 
up husband drive away behind his handsome 
bay horses to his office in town, and then fallen 
into an unpleasant fit of meditation over her 
morning task of putting the sitting-room in 
order. 

The suggestion of Cupid’s bow had entirely 
disappeared by the time she had mentally re- 
viewed the whole situation, and her mouth was, 
as the old black servant secretly observed as 
she entered, “ set for a fight.” 

“ Ef ever Mis’ Linda gits her back up onc’t, 
jihat air Englishman better look out for his- 
se’f,” old Rose had confided to a confidential 
friend. “ I knows the Fitzhugh blood. It 

won’t bear much puttin’ upon, now I tells you.” 

2 


i8 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


The old family servant was not particularly 
fond of her Mis’ Linda’s husband, and she 
looked forward to that crisis when the Fitz- 
hugh blood would become heated. 

“ Laws, honey,” she made bold to say as 
she came forward and took the broom into 
her hard, muscular hands, “ you go and set 
down. You’s got no call to worry yo’se’f no- 
how ’bout housewuk.” 

“ But you have enough to do already, Rose,” 
said Mrs. Meeks kindly, and turning her eyes, 
in which tears glistened, away from the with- 
ered, kindly old face. She dared not meet 
the look of sympathy, being in that humor 
when even a dignified woman may be melted 
into indiscreet confidences under the tempta- 
tion of a silent, intelligent championship. 

Old Rose, however, began to sweep with 
those deft, smooth strokes that raise no dust, 
and with her head bent, she talked along in a 
seemingly purposeless fashion. 

“ I’s an ole coon, Mis’ Linda ; a little extry 
wuk ain’t goin’ to hurt me none. You take 


WHEN LOVE ENSLAVES. 


!9 


keer yo’se’f, honey, an’ don’ wuk yo’ good 
looks away. An’ don’ fret ’em away, neither. 
You mus’n’t wu’y yo’se’f, chile. Never was 
er man wuth wu’yin’ over. Ain’t I had three 
husbands? De good Laud, He tuk Jim an’ 
Abraham, an’ den I, like a fool, tuk up wid 
Josh. An’ he drunk an’ drunk, an’ den he 
cusses an’ swear at me, an’ me wu’kin’ myse’f 
like er ole hoss, and den I jes gets up an’ I say, 
‘Josh, I don’ ’low no nigger ter cuss at me ! ’ 
Isays, ‘You kin hev de inside of dis house 
an’ I’ll tek de outside,’ and so I comes back 
ter de ole place, an’ what Josh do? Why, 
Josh, he sober up, an’ he ’gins ter see den 
w’at comes o’ ugliness, an’ he follow a’ter me, 
an’ heah he is, gard’nin’ fur Mr. Meeks. But 
when he comes home ter de shanty he don’ 
cuss at me no mo’. Bes’ way is jes ter let dese 
men know dere place, honey, once an’ fur all.” 

After old Rose had gone out with the dust- 
pan, Mrs. Meeks sat still in the rocking-chair 
by the window, from which she could see 
quite a distance down the road ; but her vision 


20 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


was turned too intensely inward to admit of 
her taking any interest in the few passers-by. 

Strange how a single sentence coming at the 
right time, will have a force that tons of inop- 
portune advice has not. “ Bes’ way is jes ter 
let dese men know dere place, honey, once an’ 
fur all.” The sage, worldly-wise policy of 
this ignorant colored woman, to whom mother- 
wit had suggested methods culture could 
scarcely have rendered more effective, struck 
a chord in the heart of her mistress that would 
have failed to vibrate at any other moment. 
When causes of irritation are not present, one 
is simply amused in listening to recitals that 
piquantly set forth the temper of the subject, 
but when the mind is oppressed by a sense of 
long-smothered injuries, it turns a very dif- 
ferent aspect toward experiences that appear 
similar to its own. 

Mrs. Meeks would not have deliberately 
made herself, or permitted any one else to 
make comparisons between her husband and 
Uncle Josh, whose outward uncouthness re- 


WHEN LOVE ENSLAVES. 


2 


moved him leagues distant from his master. 
Yet, with that gentleman’s last muttered ex- 
pression smarting in her ears, she quailed at 
the suggestion of a spiritual likeness between 
the two beings in their antipodal tweed and 
jeans. Floating in upon her disturbed mind 
came a certain rude epigram which she had 
heard in the kitchen years ago when, a tiny 
girl, she was playing about the door, and had 
remembered because it struck her as being 
funny : “ All men’s tar off de same stick.” 

“ True !” said Mrs. Meeks bitterly, the tears 
falling now without disguise. “ Men are all 
alike. I thought Robert was different. And 
our life together was to be a heaven upon 
earth ? Well, this is the end of it all. I can- 
not stand his temper — I will not stand it ! ” 

How far her resentful musings would have 
extended if she had been left a while longer 
in that worst of solitudes, the loneliness of 
affronted dignity, is uncertain, for her tears 
were suddenly checked by sounds of visitors. 
A keen-eyed, vivacious, middle-aged woman 


22 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


alighted at the door from an open carriage 
and made her way in without ceremony. 
Mrs. Meeks started up with intent to escape, 
but settled back in her chair again as her 
visitor entered with the little whirl and rush 
that characterizes the movements of a lively, 
excitable woman. 

Her sharp black eyes took in the situation 
at a glance ; the half-arranged room, Mrs. 
Meek’s dishabille, her despondent attitude and 
the traces of tears. She advanced quickly and 
put out both hands, exclaiming in a voice of 
mingled affection and curiosity : 

“ Linda, what is the matter ? ” 

“ Oh, Louise, for once I am sorry to see 
you ! ” 

These two women were lifelong friends ; 
friends in the sense in which Virginians 
understand the term, their relations being of 
the sort that involves the frankest self-dis- 
closure, and an immediate discussion of every 
important circumstance entering into their 
experience. 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 


2 3 


“ Now, my dear,” said Louise Gourlay, in a 
husky, emphatic voice, which to her torment 
she could never soften, “ Providence sent me 
here this morning. I think too much of you 
not to understand at once what ails you. 
Mr. Meeks has been abusing you ! ” 

Mrs. Meeks blushed and tried to look in- 
dignant, but only succeeded in looking un- 
happy. 

“ There is no use in talking about it,” she 
said, bracing herself to encounter opposition. 
“ Some things ought not to be talked about. 
It cannot help any. I can’t go back and be 
a girl again.” There was a slight pause and 
a struggle after control, and then she broke 
out with a sob : “ Oh, Louise, why did I 

marry ? ” 

“ The good Lord only knows why any of us 
marry,” answered the older woman, raising her 
eyes devoutly. “ But I suppose the world has 
to be carried on some way. It isn’t so much 
the marrying, after all, that’s the trouble, as 
the foolishness afterward. Now, dear, you re- 


24 so UTHERN HE A R TS. 

member that I prophesied long ago that Mr. 
Meeks would tyrannize over you hand and 
foot, if you let him. A man can’t help trying 
to rule the roost — mercy, what’s all that row 
about ? ” 

She broke off suddenly and got up to look 
out of the window as sounds of a great com- 
motion in the garden turned the peaceful 
scene without into one of those miniature 
pandemoniums not uncommon in the country, 
where a flock of hens follow a Robin Hood of 
a spouse in his raids upon forbidden terri- 
tory. 

Robin Hood in this case was a superb black 
Spanish cock with large powers of leadership, 
and he had succeeded in marshaling his entire 
female troop into the geranium patch before 
Uncle Josh, soberly hoeing corn in the rear, 
was made aware of the invasion. 

He ambled forward, waving his hat and 
shouting. Aunt Rose ran out, waving her 
apron, and the daring Robin Hood, making 
as much noise as both of them, strode back 


WHEN LO VE ENSLA VE$. 


2 5 

and forth, protecting while at the same time 
vigorously protesting against the retreat of his 
flock. 

“ Mercy on us ! ” ejaculated Mrs. Gourlay, 
“ the hens are trampling over your yellow 
chrysanthemums, Linda.” 

Confidences can wait, but the peril of a 
cherished flower-bed is not lightly to be set 
aside. Mrs. Meeks was stung into renewed 
interest in the life she had been upon the 
point of denouncing as utterly devoid of sat- 
isfaction. It was impossible to sit still and 
watch those lazy, awkward negroes vainly try- 
ing to head off the stout-hearted rooster. She 
went out, at first with rather a contemptuous, 
indifferent air, but, as the cause of provocation 
scuttled toward her she suddenly felt her in- 
definite sense of wrong against a sex at large 
become concentrated into fury toward this 
small masculine specimen, and entered into the 
chase with an ardor that soon routed him from 
the field. 

She entered the house half laughing, half 


26 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


frowning at the two darkies, who had rather 
enjoyed the little excitement. 

“ Aunt Rose, you are as bad as a child, 
standing giggling there! You had better be 
making some little cakes for lunch. Miss 
Louise will stay.” 

“ Laws, Mis’ Linda, I couldn’t he’p myse’f. 
Dat rooster, he de wuss sp’iled fowl I ebber 
see. He oughter be clapped inter de pot. 
He got a heap o’ sense, too, but he done sp’iled 
tell he jes rotten.” Thus Rose, as she saun- 
tered back to her kitchen, to look up eggs and 
sugar for her cakes. Meanwhile, Mrs, Gour- 
lay was saying : 

“No, Linda, I can’t stay to-day. You drive 
back with me and stay all night. It’s an age 
since you spent the night at my house. Come, 
it will do Mr. Meeks good to show him you 
feel a proper resentment. It’s high time you 
took a stand.” 

“ Stay all night ? ” said Linda slowly. She 
felt that the significance of the act would be 
greater to her husband than her adviser was 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 


27 


aware. It would be dropping the old life, put- 
ting a check upon all the sweet, confidential 
relations that were so dear to both, and start- 
ing out in a new, untried path of independ- 
ence, of separateness that might end in com- 
plete alienation. She was a reasoning woman, 
used to foreseeing consequences. Sometimes 
she was impatient of the sound logical faculty 
that held her impulsive disposition in check, 
and longed to plunge headlong into some kind 
of folly, as a child bound over by a promise 
not to meddle with sweets, has spasms of temp- 
tation which even the certainty of illness and 
castor oil are hardly sufficient to restrain. 

She got up and walked slowly toward the 
door that opened into her own and her hus- 
band's room. It was a spacious chamber, 
capable of holding the belongings of two per- 
sons, and before its wide-open fireplace filled 
with small logs ready for lighting, was drawn 
a great easy-chair, in which he loved to recline 
in the evenings with her on a cushion at his 
feet, while they watched the blaze together. A 


28 


SOUTHERN HE A R TS. 


slight, nervous shudder passed over Linda as 
her dress brushed against the chair on her 
way to the closet where her numerous hats 
were arranged in their boxes. Mr. Meeks liked 
to see his pretty wife well dressed, and no 
woman in the county had such an abundance 
of fine clothes. She took down a fawn-colored 
wool gown and went to the dressing-case to 
fasten it before the glass. A serious, tremu- 
lous face looked back at her, a face made for 
sweet looks, for happiness, but now shadowed 
by the most miserable feelings a woman can 
have, for “ to be wroth with one we love doth 
work like madness in the brain.” 

There, hanging on its pretty stand, was her 
jeweled watch, his wedding gift to her. Shin- 
ing on the pin cushion were brooches and little 
trinkets, every one of which marked some 
pleasant episode. A vase of her favorite late 
white roses gathered by his hands only the 
evening before, breathed reproachful sweetness 
as she hastily bent over them. 

But Linda was a proud woman as well as 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 


29 


a tender one. The Fitzhugh spirit had been 
chafed beyond endurance ; it could bear the 
hurts of privation, of grief, ruin and all suf- 
ferings inflicted by evil circumstances ; it could 
not submit to insult. So she named the rough- 
ness of the man whose one great fault had to- 
day come to outweigh in her mind innumerable 
virtues. She called old Rose, gave a few or- 
ders in a tone that warned the servant to pre- 
serve silence in the midst of surprise, and then, 
beside her friend who kept up a cheerful flow 
of talk, moved tall and stately toward the car- 
riage, and gazed dry-eyed, but ah, how sadly, 
at the fine old red brick dwelling half-covered 
with Virginia creeper and clematis, till a turn 
of the road swept it out of sight. 

The strong black horses pranced merrily 
along the road, which now on one side lay be- 
neath the mountain, covered with the red, yel- 
low and brown masses of forestry that in the 
autumn glorify the earth, and in daily bleeding 
beauty divert a gazer’s thoughts from the cruel 
frosts of night. To the left a deep gorge, 


30 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


rocky and dangerous, swept to the river below. 
Two vehicles, coining in opposite directions, 
could barely pass each other, and the driver 
who had the inside track might well bless his 
luck. But secure in the skill of their black 
Jehu, the two women gave no single thought 
to danger, but kept up their conversation inde- 
fatigably. John, keen and alert, pulled up his 
team carefully as he heard the tramp of a horse- 
man rapidly approaching. 

The horseman also slowed up, and when 
alongside stopped entirely, to exchange greet- 
ings. He was elderly and distinguished-look- 
ing, despite his shabby, dust-covered clothing 
and carelessly-cropped hair and beard. His 
worn, melancholy face brightened as he swept 
off his hat and made careful inquiries after the 
ladies’ health. Then he cantered on and the 
inmates of the carriage leaned back again. 

“ Poor Colonel Thomas ! ” commented Mrs. 
Gourlay. “ I recollect when he was the first 
young man in the county. He has gone all to 
pieces in the last year. He was rather high 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 


once, but Amanda was too much for him. 
Sam calls her ‘ Petruchio in petticoats.’ ” 

Her tones smote her listener’s ear as sounds 
coming from afar. Poor Colonel Thomas ! 
Had he ever been in love with that sharp- 
tongued woman ? How terrible for a woman to 
have upon her conscience the wreck of a man’s 
life. If Robert should ever come to wear that 
bowed look — if instead of the proud confidence 
that well became his comely Saxon features, 
he should show in sunken eyes and fitful flush 
the marks of that ill remedy that promises but 
never brings “ surcease of sorrow. . . .” But he 
was too strong, too sane ; misery could never 
drive him to dissipation, although it might 
drive him to desperation of another sort. Her 
quick fancy began to picture Robert estranged 
from the woman he loved. Mentally she saw 
him growing cold, gloomy and reserved — their 
intimacy gone as if it had never been, and they 
two, bound by unbreakable ties, aging in sight 
of each other, their lives dragging on in a way 
that might come to end in mutual aversion and 


3 2 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


disgust. She knew that Robert would construe 
her going away to-day, after their cold parting, 
into a determination to assert herself against 
him, and still worse, to seek abroad sympathy 
for that which she was bound as a loving wife 
to bear in silence and to forget. 

The proud Fitzhugh blood flamed in her 
cheeks and her head flung up unconsciously. 
But at the same instant there came into her 
mind, as a bugle note sounds amid the horrid 
discord of battle, a sentence Robert had ut- 
tered to her once in the early days of their 
love, when he had inadvertently offended her 
by a careless remark : “ A man is not to be 

judged by one word, but by all the acts of his 
life/' 

And as if in her mental struggle she had 
been seeking some maxim as a guide, she fas- 
tened upon this and repeated it over and over 
to herself. 

All this time she had been mechanically 
giving outward attention to Mrs. Gourlay, al- 
though that shrewd woman, comprehending 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 


33 

her absent glance, made small exactions upon 
her for reply. But seeing a sudden brightness 
take the place of her friend’s dull gaze, she 
gave her talk more point. 

“ Sam is home, my dear. He came yester- 
day, and he says he means to pay us an old- 
fashioned visit. I hope the weather will keep 
fine so we can have some dancing picnics. He 
declares they are better fun than anything in 
Philadelphia.” 

“Yes, I always liked them — when I was a 
girl” 

“ What are you now, an aged woman ? Non- 
sense, you are even prettier than you used to 
be when Sam spent his days on the road be- 
tween our place and your father’s. Ah, child, 
you treated Sam badly. He never got over 
your marriage, poor fellow. I don’t know how 
he will bear meeting you to-day, without any 
preparation. But men’s hearts bend, they 
never break ; that’s one comfort. Still, per- 
haps you’d best not flirt too hard with him.” 

Linda started and looked squarely at her 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


34 

friend. She knew that in the code of the Vir- 
ginia matron, herself holding her girlhood’s 
coquetries in dear remembrance, such meetings 
between old flames and mild renewals of for- 
mer admiration were perfectly harmless and 
natural. But her husband would think differ- 
ently. He might believe this meeting pre- 
meditated on her part ; believe that she sought 
diversion of a dangerous and a doubtful na- 
ture. For she knew well, and he had guessed, 
that Sam Hilton’s courtship of her had been no 
idle pastime, and that the young Southerner 
bore the Englishman a grudge which would 
make him a swift partisan if there once entered 
his head the slightest suspicion that she had 
reason to complain of the treatment she re- 
ceived. 

Had she ? Her husband was in general good- 
ness itself, all indulgence and kindness except 
when wrought upon by outer irritating quality, 
or annoyed at carelessness in herself. For she 
was forgetful — not wantonly careless, but lack- 
ing in that perfect method his good taste de- 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 


35 

mantled. He was arbitrary — yes — still, some of 
the blame was hers, and if they had differences 
it was her place to give in. So the wife told 
herself in the quick interval between Mrs. 
Gourlay’s last remark, and the turning of the 
carriage into the east fork of the road that 
marked half the distance between the two 
residences. 

“Louise,” she said in an imperative under- 
tone, “tell John to turn back and take me 
home. I must go back this minute. If you 
think anything of me,” she added hastily, in- 
terposing against remonstrance, “ do as I ask.” 

“ Now, Linda, listen to reason. If you’ve 
made up your mind to go back and eat humble- 
pie — excuse the truth — at least wait till after 
dinner and Sam shall drive you back. It would 
be absurd to turn back now.” 

“ Louise — you don’t understand my feeling. 
I was wrong to come. Robert was to come 
home early this evening and bring an old friend 
just from England with him to stay a few days. 
Think how mortifying to find me gone away !” 


36 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


“ It would look badly. Still — serve him 
right ! ” 

“No, I was cross myself this morning — prob- 
ably. I didn’t mean to tell you of our quarrel 
— our half quarrel. But never mind talking 
about it, only, please take me back. Or else 
let me walk? I can walk ; it’s not far.” 

“ Linda Fitzhugh ! Well, then — John, Mrs. 
Meeks has forgotten an important engagement 
and we must take her straight home again. 
Can you turn the carriage here? ” 

“ Reckon I kin, m’m,” said John sulkily, and 
the horses were turned about. 

Mrs. Gourlay glanced at her watch and said 
resignedly : 

“ It will be half-past one by the time I am 
back, and the children will be savage, for I 
promised them I wouldn’t stay long this morn- 
ing. But you always have your own way with 
me, Linda. I wish you were half as spunky 
with somebody else.” 

“ Don’t, dearest,” Linda entreated, the color 
rising in her cheeks. 


WHEN LOVE ENSLAVES. 


37 

“ I will say it. If you keep on giving in this 
way to a man’s temper, you’ll end by not dar- 
ing to say your soul’s your own.” 

“ Robert is imperious, perhaps,” the young 
wife answered slowly. “ But that is between 
him and me. If I can stand it, my friends 
needn’t worry.” 

“ My dear child, you know I don’t mean to 
be meddlesome. I might have recollected the 
old adage about a husband and wife being a 
pair of scissors, and whatever comes between 
the blades gets cut. But there is a principle 
involved here.” 

“ Yes,” assented Linda, “ there is a principle 
involved.” 

“ I suppose you mean your principles and 
mine are not the same,” said the elder woman, 
with a little heat. 

“ Oh, yours are all right for you. But I must 
conform myself to a different rule. I can’t ex- 
plain it all, dear, only, right or wrong, I shall 
continue to give in — as you term it — to Robert. 
If he is high-tempered, there’s all the more 


SOUTHERN HEARTS . 


38 

reason why I shouldn’t be. I know what he 
expects of me — what he has always expected 
of me ” 

“ Expects you to be an angel ! ” broke in her 
friend, “ while he is — whatever he chooses.” 

“ Well,” answered Linda, with a brilliant 
smile, “ I’ll be as near an angel as I can. You 
don’t understand. There are compensations. 
Even if there is a little bitter drop now and 
then, he makes me very happy. And happi- 
ness is worth an effort.” 

“Well, well,” sighed her friend, and they 
both fell into silence. 

At the porch they parted with a warmer 
kiss than usual. Linda could not help feeling 
that she had cast herself adrift to swim alone 
henceforth in waters that might be cold and 
sullen. She went into the house and took off 
her hat half reluctantly. The next few hours 
dragged on in unbroken dulness. About four 
o’clock the bay horses dashed up and Mr. Meeks 
alighted from his buggy, followed by a fine- 
looking, gray-haired man who was in the midst 


WHEN LOVE ENSLA VES. 


39 


of remarks evidently admiring and compli- 
mentary in their nature. 

Mrs. Meeks stood upon the veranda, her eyes 
a trifle brighter than usual, her cheeks a trifle 
warmer ; her head was held unconsciously a 
little high, but otherwise there was no criticism 
to be made upon the gracious sweetness with 
which she greeted her husband and his guest. 

“ I was in a measure prepared to meet you,” 
said the sauve Briton. “ Meeks has been treat- 
ing me to certain rhapsodies of description with 
which I now perfectly sympathize.” 

“ In Virginia we say that an acquaintance 
begun with a compliment ends in a duel,” said 
Linda, smiling. 

When the guest had been ushered up-stairs 
to wash off the dust of travel, Mr. Meeks put 
his arm about his wife’s waist. His eyes were 
unshadowed by any disagreeable recollections. 

“ Sweetheart ! ” he said. 

u He will never make any apologies,” thought 
Linda. “ Well, no matter. I am glad I came 
back.” 





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THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO . 1 


I. 

“Mandy’s jest crazy to go to New York,” 
said Mrs. Powell to her friend Mrs. Thomas, 
who was spending the day with her. 

The two elderly women were “ kin ” in that 
wide-reaching term that in Virginia stretches 
out over blood relationship to the remotest 
degree of fortieth cousinship. Mr. Thomas’ 
mother had been a Powell, and it was from the 
Powells, she was accustomed to say. with ill- 
concealed pride, that her son Vivian got his 
high spirit and his splendid eyes. 

Amanda Powell had the identical dark brown 
eyes and apparently the same high spirit. 
When she was six and Vivian twelve, the two 
had been used to retire from family parties 
1 Copyright, 1897 and 1898, by S. H. Moore & Co 

43 


44 


SO UTHE RN TIE A R TS 


anywhere from one to a dozen times in the 
course of an afternoon to have it out, in the 
back hallway, or in the garret, or even, when 
the excitement was intense, in the “ far barn,” 
a dilapidated building a quarter of a mile away 
from the house. 

Vivian, even at the manly age of twelve, and 
in the face of all the traditions of chivalry, 
which to a Southern boy of that period exer- 
cised a very real influence over his attitude to- 
ward the softer sex, despite the vigilance of 
his mother and aunts, who were perpetually 
admonishing him to recollect that “ Mandy 
was little and a girl besides,” Vivian was tor- 
mented by a desire to subdue his spunky, 
small cousin at any cost of time and ingenuity. 
He had once made a great flourish with a hazel 
switch and raised a welt on her slim bare arm, 
which gave him immense satisfaction at the 
moment, and haunted him remorsefully for 
weeks afterwards. Amanda had promptly 
pulled out a lock of his hair, and then, setting 
her back against the side of the barn and grit- 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


45 

ting her tiny white teeth, had bidden him 
“ come on ” in a tone ringing with belligerent 
probabilities. 

After that day a new element was added to 
the attraction the two children had for each 
other. Their attitude was much like that of 
two unfledged chickens who have had a fight 
ending in a drawn battle, and have a thirst 
for satisfaction. Whoever has watched a 
pair of very young roosters in the act of 
combat, knows how each one makes a peck 
and then draws off and stands upon the de- 
fensive, vigilant and defiant ; another peck — 
then another rest, neither one giving in 
or running away until some intruder parts 
them. 

Vivian and Amanda had continued upon 
these terms until increasing years rendered 
actual fighting impossible, and left to their 
antagonistic spirits only the resource of sting- 
ing words, and to hours of repentance the mere 
interchange of shy glances and softer speech, 
added to a fierce absorption of one another’s 


46 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


society, which left the rest of the world com- 
pletely outside. 

The Powell and Thomas tribe had come in 
the course of time to accept the alliance be- 
tween the fighting cousins as one of the mys- 
terious results of the strange similarity of the 
two children in looks and disposition, and all 
the other young cousins had learned that these 
two black-eyed friend-enemies belonged to one 
another, and tolerated no interference in their 
relation. 

Both were fatherless, and so, in either case, 
the young spirit that needed wise and loving 
restraint, had broken through the feeble curb 
of motherly fondness and gained freedom be- 
fore achieving the self-control that prevents 
liberty from degenerating into license. 

Amanda was now eighteen, and Vivian — just 
home from a two-years’ term at the College of 
Virginia — was twenty-four. The two mothers, 
sitting together that afternoon, a ^eek after 
Vivian’s premature return from college, were 
anxiously alive to all the possibilities smoulder 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 47 

in g in such a period and fanned by recent 
separation and the excitement of inquiry into 
the changes a couple of years had wrought. 

I should like to dwell for a moment upon 
the scene of this little motherly conference. 
It was the “ settin’-room ” of a large, old-fash- 
ioned mansion in central Virginia, and was one 
of two ample square rooms lying on either side 
of a great hall that ran straight through the 
middle of the house and lost itself in a broad 
porch in the rear. 

Its newly white-washed walls were half 
covered with dusky old family portraits in-, 
terspersed with bits of what Amanda called 
“ bric-a-brac,” meaning wood-cuts from the 
illustrated weeklies, brilliantly colored fans, 
and bunches of ferns and grasses tied together 
with ends of sash ribbon. The worn carpet 
covering the middle of the floor was an ancient 
and costly Axminster, and the few pieces of 
furniture were of massive mahogany, the long 
sofa and two armchairs covered with black 
haircloth, but overlaid with so many knitted 


48 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

tidies and scarfs that their dreariness was well 
concealed. In the deep, wide fireplace a big 
log burned slowly this chilly April day, and on 
either side of a spider-legged table drawn up 
before the blaze, sat and rocked the elderly 
ladies, dividing their attention between a 
small decanter of Madeira and a plate of Aunt 
’Liza’s delicious plum cake, and the subject of 
Amanda’s craze to go to New York. 

“ Mandy’s always had her own way about 
everything up to this,” said Mrs. Thomas, her 
cool, pale blue eyes turning their wavering 
glance upon the plump, handsome face of her 
hostess, whose blooming cheeks were framed 
in snowy curls and set off by a lace fichu that 
came up high around the neck of her gray 
merino dress and was fastened in front by a 
pin made of her husband’s hair woven into 
the form of a bunch of grapes. The term 
“ motherly ” described her accurately ; her 
cheery smile, her ponderous but quick mo- 
tions, her rich-toned voice and large, soft hands, 
all made up a personnel that drew hearts to her 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


49 


in affectionate confidence. She laughed in 
responding to her cousin’s remark, a mellow, 
rippling laugh, such as you might have ex- 
pected from her. 

“ I dunno what ’u’d happen if anybody wuz 
to set ’emselves up against Mandy,” she said, 
shaking her beautiful white curls. “And I 
dunno’s her way is sech a bad way. She don’t 
like to have anybody say what she shall do and 
what she sha’n’t, but give her her head and she’s 
generous as the day, and good-hearted. The 
Powell disposition always wuz to be a leetle 
wilful, but the Major and I always got along 
well, and Mandy’s like her pa. She was al- 
ways wild to travel, and she’s not had a great 
opportunity to see the world. If I could leave 
home — or had anybody to take her ! But I 
reckon it’ll have to be managed some way. 
Mandy’s bound to go.” 

“ There’s one person ’u’d be glad enough to 
take her,” said Mrs. Thomas. “ He’d take her 
anywhere she wanted to go, shore.” 

You mean Edgar Chamblin ? ” 

4 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


5 ° 

“ You know I mean Vivian, so what’s the 
use o’ talkin’ ’bout anybody else ? I seen cl’ar 
’nuff, Nellie, five year ago, how things wuz 
goin’ to be when them two growed up. It’s 
nater, and I dunno’s we kin help it, even sup- 
posin’ we wuz to desire to.” 

A troubled look passed over Mrs. Powell’s 
face ; passed and left no trace, as a cloud passes 
over the sun. “ Whatever is, is best,” she had 
been saying all her life, when persons about 
her were complaining of fate and Providence 
and ill-luck. But beneath her optimism was a 
basis of sound judgment, and she always quietly 
made herself sure that nothing better was 
attainable before acquiescing in such arrange- 
ments as Providence allotted. 

“ Edgar Chamblin is jest sech a young man 
as I’d like to see Mandy marry,” she observed 
placidly. “ I’ve nothin’ ag’in Vivian — you 
know I’ve always been as fond of him as if he 
wuz my own — but put fire and tow together! 
Now, Edgar’s one of the kind that’d let Mandy 
do jest what she pleased. He’s easy-goin’. 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


5 T 

Not but what he’s sensible too, and steady. 
I’d be proud to hev Mandy so well suited in a 
husband as Ed’d suit her.” 

“ I should think you’d know better’n to pick 
out who Mandy’s goin’ to marry,” said Vivian’s 
mother. “ And I ain’t so shore as it’s the best 
thing fur a woman to have a husband give in 
to her every whip-stitch. Probably you dunno 
what it is to have a shiftless, no-account, no- 
back-bone sort o’ creetur ’round under foot — ” 
“ Lord knows, all I want’s my child’s hap- 
piness,” sighed good Mrs Powell. “ If she and 
Vivian air fond o’ one another, I’m not the one 
to oppose ’em. But I can’t say now as I want 
it so. It stands to reason two black-eyed, high- 
strung people, both proud as Lucifer, must ex- 
pect to have a stormy life together. Why, 
it’d make me tremble — the idee of ’em goin’ 
away on a weddin’ tour ! ” 

“ Vivian’s a good boy, Nellie,” answered his 
mother in a tone that trembled a little. “You 
know, yourself, he’s a gentleman. No woman 
need be afeard of a man if he’s a gentleman.” 


5 2 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


“ My dear, the Major wuz a gentleman ; no 
man more so. But I dunno what’d happened 
if I hadn’t known how to manage him. You’ve 
either got to manage a man or be managed, 
and though there air women that need man- 
agin’, and some that like it, I’ve never seen the 
man yet that’s fit to be the head o’ woman. 
I ain’t sayin’ they don’t exist. I haven’t been 
about much. But my mother had. She’d 
been everywhere. Her father was Commander 
in the Navy, as you know, and she said to me 
once : ‘ Nellie, I never yet see the man that 
was good enough for a good woman.’ I don’t 
go as fur as that. Ma was ruther high in her 
notions. But on the other hand it’d go mighty 
hard with me to have to stand by and see a 
man that married Mandy with his hand on top.” 

“ Seems to me you needn’t be afeard o’ that 
if she has Vivian. It’s been all along with 
them two that if one wuz ahead one day, 
t’other was shore to git ahead the next. You 
recollect the old saying : ‘ Pull Dick, pull 

deevil,’ I reckon, Nellie?” 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


53 

“That’s the worst on it. I’m mortal afeard 
they’d kill one another. They ain’t noways 
suited, Jane, and I trust to mercy that the 
thing’s not to be.” 

Mrs. Powell pronounced her ultimatum with 
unusual energy, and rising, began to stir about 
the room, setting cushions and folding up 
pieces of sewing in a manner that evinced a 
wish to to shake off a disagreeable impression. 
Never before had she felt a wish to fight the 
inevitable. She was not one of the thin- 
skinned, superstitious beings who claim to be 
intuitional, and she was content, ordinarily, to 
recognize events when they actually took place, 
and not spy them out beforehand in the clouds 
of fancy. But mothers seem to have a special 
sense that warns of coming danger, and this 
good mother had felt within the last few 
minutes a strange sinking at the heart in con- 
nection with thoughts of Mandy which made 
her very anxious and, as she put it, “ fidgety,” so 
that to sit still longer and discuss the matter 
of this undesired marriage was an impossibility. 


54 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


“ I sort o’ hoped you wouldn’t be averse to 
the children’s cornin’ together, Nellie,” were 
Mrs. Thomas’s parting words as she settled 
herself in the broad carryall while the sun was 
still high, to drive the two miles to Bloomdale, 
where, standing back a little way from Main 
Street, was the modern brick house that her 
father, the general storekeeper “ in town,” had 
left her and to her eldest son George after her, 
the entail taking no account of Vivian, to whom 
she promptly gave up his father’s farm the day 
he came of age. 

As she took up the reins after this plaintive 
remark and turned her eyes reproachfully upon 
Mrs. Powell’s countenance, beaming upon the 
parting guest from the broad doorway, another 
vehicle whirled around the curve and stopped, 
and two beautiful pairs of dark eyes smiled 
upon her, as Vivian himself sprang out and put 
his arm about Amanda with a zeal that was 
totally unnecessary to the furthering of that 
active damsel’s descent to the ground. 

“ Where have you two been all this blessed 


55 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 

afternoon, when I needed Mandy to hem them 
table-cloths ?” said Mrs. Powell, her beaming 
countenance contradicting her complaint, as 
Amanda put both arms about her neck and 
kissed her with an affection that was as genuine 
as it was spontaneous. 

“ Been to Bear’s Den,” said Amanda, a rich 
color mantling her opal-tinted cheeks, and a 
shy, saucy smile curving a mouth formed for 
the torment of men, in more senses than one. 
Her voice was a modified edition of her 
mother’s, lazy, rich and sweet, but with keener 
timber. Under provocation it might become 
scornful, which Mrs. Powell’s could not. She 
was tall and symmetrically built, her figure al- 
ready showing the luxurious development that 
to girls of northern race comes only with an un- 
comfortable embonpoint. But there was not 
a trace of clumsiness in her make-up, which 
united energy and languor in singularly equal 
proportions. 

A fair picture the little group made, when 
Vivian had placed himself beside his young 


5 6 SOUTHERN HEAR TS 

kinswoman and stood, leaning against the pil- 
lar, his soft hat dangling from one hand, while 
the other surreptitiously held Amanda’s under 
cover of her shawl. He was her match in 
beauty and very like her, but with lighter 
coloring, his mother’s blonde tints reappearing 
in his ruddy skin and bronze-brown mustache. 
With equal fire of glance, there was yet some- 
thing that was not present in her spirited coun- 
tenance ; a hint of petulance and selfishness. 
But it was counter-balanced by a wonderful 
tenderness of expression that now spread over 
his clear-cut features like a wave of moonlight, 
bringing out the rare charm that made Vivian 
at times irresistible. 

His mother, watching him with all her heart 
in her eyes, caught her breath and dropped 
the reins on her lap as she met the significant 
look he turned toward her for a second, before 
bending his gaze, filled with its utmost per- 
suasive power, upon Mrs. Powell. 

“ I reckon,” he said slowly, his tones cut- 
ting the air decisively, yet quivering with a 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


57 

certain plaintiveness that recalled “ Cousin 
Jane’s ” tremulous minor notes, “ this is as 
good a time as any to tell you both that 
Amanda and I have made up our minds to try 
housekeeping together at Benvenew.” 

“ After we come back from New York,” put 
in Amanda with a saucy glance of reminder. 

“ Children,” said Mrs. Powell, more solemnly 
than she had ever spoken in her life. She took 
a hand of each and looked from one to the 
other, while Jane Thomas scarcely breathed as 
she leaned out of the carryall toward them. 
“ Children, if ye’ve both made up your minds, 
I’ve got no call to interfere with young folks’ 
happiness, and I sha’n’t. What I say now, I 
say once and for all, and I sha’n’t harp on it. 
But I know both on ye pretty nigh as well as 
I know myself. I’m afeard my girl needs 
somethin’ you can’t give her, Vivian. You 
think you don’t, honey,” she added, squeezing 
the soft palm laid in her own, and longing for 
eloquence to express the meaning that was in 
her heart ; “ but you ain’t a woman yet ; 


58 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

you’re only a child. And what you’re a-goin’ 
to turn out depends more’n you can think now, 
on the kind of marriage you make. I pity the 
man that sets his heart on makin’ you over to 
suit himself. And you, my dear boy, air too 
rash — you ain’t settled enough. And it’s my 
duty to say, fur your own sake, that if you two 
try gettin’ along together, you’ll be ridin’ over 
to your mother or to me some day with a 
mouthful of complaints ’gainst Mandy. And 
some of ’em ’ll be just. There’s a soft streak 
in Mandy and there’s a hard streak, and I’m 
afeard you’ll find the hard one.” 

“ Why, mother ! ” said Amanda, astonished 
and a little alarmed at her jolly mother’s grave 
discourse. The words meant nothing to her 
then. She turned a laughing glance upon her 
lover, who had listened with equal lack of 
comprehension. Now they with one accord 
drew closer together. Certainly, any advice 
which does not harmonize with the wishes of 
those matrimonially inclined is as the voice of 
one crying in the wilderness. 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 59 

“ We always meant to be married, Aunt 
Nellie,” answered Vivian after a short pause. 
“ No other girl would suit me, and she is 
satisfied with me. Arnt you, Mandy ?” 

“ Yes,” said Amanda without hesitation. 

“ Nellie,” cried Mrs. Thomas, unable to con- 
tain herself any longer, “ don’t you make ’em 
feel you don’t believe they’ll be happy to- 
gether. They ain’t children now, and because 
they’ve always been sparrin’ is all the more 
reason they’ll settle down tame enough.” 

“ I should just hate a man I couldn’t have a 
good quarrel with, once in a while,” the girl 
made a pretense of whispering to her mother, 
and giving Vivian a look which meant that he 
was to understand they were to have things as 
they wanted them. 

“ I’ve got no call to say any more,” said 
Mrs. Powell, to whom this slight opposition 
had been an extraordinary effort. She felt 
that conscience could demand no more of her. 
So she kissed Amanda and then kissed Vivian, 
and Jane Thomas kissed them both and cried 


6o 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


over them, as sentimental women cry when 
they get their heart’s desire, and they all stood 
on the porch together for a few minutes, talk 
ing eagerly, perhaps to cover a little feeling 
that had been stirred up by the discussion ; a 
foreboding that could not quite be laid to rest, 
whether, after all, this marriage was a wise one, 
a prudent one, and one from which good was 
to come. 

Did Amanda feel this doubt ? Perhaps the 
odd little shiver that came over her and that 
she shook off so lightly was a premonition sho 
would have done well to heed, instead of turn- 
ing, as she did, to lay her beautiful head on 
her lover’s shoulder in a manner that was 
rather too deliberate to be altogether fond. 

Did Vivian experience any fear of the future 
in this instant of promised fulfilment of his 
hopes? Not he. The time was as yet far 
distant when that buoyant glance which seemed 
to challenge fate was to be turned downward 
in melancholy resignation, and the impetuous 
outleaping of suggestion and comment that 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


61 


was natural to his enthusiastic temperament 
become hesitating appeal to one he feared to 
displease. 

And the two mothers, watching this adored 
son and daughter and rejoicing in their joy, 
sympathizing and admiring with that admira- 
tion which is most perfectly free from envy, 
did their knowledge of human nature and 
their past experience not suggest that which 
must make them tremble in regarding these 
two heedless young creatures, both children 
of one haughty race, bent upon gratifying 
that impulse of mutual attraction which was 
more than likely to have its source in animal 
obstinacy than in reasonable, human affec- 
tion ? 

But how limited is the outlook of elderly 
women in these little southern villages, where 
the history of a few lives constitutes their en- 
tire equipment in sociology, and to whom the 
idea of essential differences between sets of 
conditions superficially alike, can never present 
itself strongly. Mrs. Powell’s motherly instinct 


62 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


had had its spasm of alarm, but had been 
quieted by the soothing reflection that mar- 
riage tames high spirits, and that the Rubicon 
of matrimony once passed, adjustment to cir- 
cumstances must follow. Nothing else was 
conceivable. As for Jane Thomas, any pic- 
ture of a future into which trouble might come 
to her son even from the “ curse of a granted 
prayer ” was beyond her imagination. All she 
had asked in life since Vivian was born was 
that he might have whatever was necessary to 
make him happy, and that spirited youth had 
succeeded in convincing her that happiness 
lay in having what he wanted. He wanted 
Amanda, and now he had got her. Mrs. 
Thomas rejoiced as far as her melancholy tem- 
perament permitted, and trusted the future to 
Providence. And in a month Amanda Powell 
had become “ young Mrs. Thomas.” A month 
is a short engagement in Virginia, but Vivian 
was impatient to open up his closed homestead, 
and start the farm going according to some new 
theories of farming, which chiefly took shape 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 63 

in patent fertilizer and an improved kind oi 
harrow ; also, the introduction of white laboi 
to supersede the “ lazy darkies.” 

And to Amanda marriage meant the pretty 
pearl ring her lover had placed upon her fin- 
ger, the rustling white silk gown her mother 
had made for her in Ryburg, and — the wed- 
ding journey. Our wildest dreams are only 
re-combinations of what we have experienced 
or read of, and how could this girl of eighteen, 
for all her rich and varied nature, dream of 
the coming of responsibilities that would 
shake her frail fancies of married life like an 
earthquake, or of mental development that 
would awaken critical faculties to the extent 
of making her rebel against what she now 
accepted as matters of course ; nothing better 
having presented itself to her mind ? 

She was satisfied that the wedding was con- 
ventionally correct, according to Fauquier 
County standards ; that the day was bright ; 
that she looked her best, and that Vivian was 
devoted without being uncomfortably demon- 


64 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


strative. For without at all understanding why 
it was so, the young girl, so full of ardor in 'all 
her attachments, had a virginal coldness toward 
her young lover that made her shrink with dis- 
taste from caresses and put aside any suggestion 
of an intimacy other than had always existed 
between them, and of which she foresaw merely 
an extension, not a transformation into any- 
thing more exacting. 

Reared by an old-fashioned southern mother, 
watched and shielded as maidens once were 
when maternal ideas of duty included an anx- 
ious supervision over a daughter’s reading, 
amusements, and associations, Amanda was in 
all essentials still a child, with only her nat- 
ural dignity and womanly instinct to protect 
her amid the various perplexities and tempta- 
tions the future might hold for her. 

New York burst upon her eager senses as the 
first deafening crash of a full orchestra might 
salute the ears of a music-mad boy who had 
never heard anything more stimulating than 
the wheezy strains of a second-rate melodeon. 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 65 

Stunned but delighted, she gazed from the car- 
riage windows upon the crowds, the stores, and 
the elevated railway, and thought that now she 
was seeing the world. 

Vivian went to the Windsor, and as the 
youthful pair descended to the dining-room 
about seven o’clock and told a servant at the 
door that they wanted “ supper,” the lofty head 
waiter in condescending admiration, swooped 
down and led them to the extreme rear of the 
room, where, ranged in close proximity, were 
four other bridal couples as newly made as 
themselves. 

But Amanda had come down in a white lawn 
gown profusely trimmed with pink satin ribbon, 
and heavy gold bracelets on her arms, bare to 
the elbow. The other brides wore walking 
suits and bonnets, with the exception of one, 
whose gown was of rich brocade, and whose 
supercilious face was set off by the most unap- 
proachable coiffure Amanda had ever seen. 

She had quick perceptions, and was keenly 
alive to any defect in her own appearance, and 
5 


66 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


in ten minutes she suffered all the agony that 
would be felt by a finished woman of the world 
who had inadvertently worn full dress to a 
reception demanding bonnets. Yet, to the 
first test her metal rang true. With heightened 
color she went through the form of dining, 
and Vivian, whose sensibilities were as keen 
as hers and whose sdf-love was greater, took 
note of certain differences between his young 
wife and the other women, and felt himself 
aggrieved by her lack of taste. It was too 
soon, and he was too tender toward her for him 
to betray intentionally this slight annoyance. 
But an admitted cause of irritation is like the 
first rip in one's apparel ; every movement that 
touches the rent extends it until the garment 
falls into rags. 

Vivian had permitted himself the latitude of 
secret fault-finding, and from this to the next 
step it was easy. 

Their first quarrel came within a week. The 
wonder is not that it came so soon, but that it 
was deferred so long. Y et, the immediate cause 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 67 

was absurdly trivial. They had arranged to 
drive to Clairmont and lunch in company with 
some friends of Vivian. But when the morn- 
ing came he felt averse to carrying out the 
program. Perhaps his head ached, or he had 
slept ill, or the discovery that his trunk key was 
missing annoyed him unduly. But anyway he 
was out of tone. 

One o’clock found him stretched out on 
the couch in their room yawning discontentedly 
over the Herald . Amanda, flitting about, sud- 
denly became aware when her toilet was half 
made that he had not begun to get ready. 

“If you don’t hurry up I’ll go off and leave 
you — lazy fellow ! ” she cried. “ They talk about 
women being always the ones to keep people 
waiting. Pm sure it’s the other way. I’m al- 
ways ready for everything before you.” 

“ I’m not going,” said Vivian abruptly, direct- 
ing a scowl toward the wall paper. 

They had now been married eight days. A 
certain French author, renowned for his biting 
epigrams, remarks : “ I do not believe there 


68 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


ever was a marriage in the world, even the 
union of a tiger and a panther, which would 
not pretend to perfect happiness for at least 
fifteen days after the marriage ceremony.” 

In this case was neither tiger nor panther ; 
only a young man who had always lorded it 
prettily over the women in his family, and a 
girl who had been brought up to expect much 
deference. Perhaps in France it might have 
taken fifteen days for the glamour to wear off. 
But in America emotions exhaust themselves 
rapidly. Amanda, standing with one gloved 
hand stretched out before her, seemingly in- 
tent upon fastening the buttons, had begun to 
reflect. 

“You ain’t well,” she observed coldly. 
“ Probably you ate too much pie last night.” 

Now, among the trifles that grate upon the 
masculine mind, is . having an indisposition 
referred to gastronomic indulgence. At such 
times a man is apt to consider that a wife but 
poorly replaces a mother. 

“ Amanda, I wish you would learn that all 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 69 

varieties of pastry don’t come under the head 
of ‘ pie.’ And I wish you wouldn’t say ‘ ain’t.’ 
It’s deucedly countrified,” 

“ Oh,” said Amanda. She deliberately took 
off her gloves and hat, and sat down upon an 
ottoman near the couch. Her color had arisen, 
and her black eyes had an ominous sparkle. 
“ Is there anything else you wish ? ” She asked 
this aggressively. Her tone suggested that she 
had not forgotten that episode of the fight in 
the barn that lay a dozen years back. She 
was quite as ready to stand upon the defen- 
sive now as she had been then. But when 
women stand sentinel their guns go off inad- 
vertently. 

“ I should think you’d be ashamed of your- 
self, Vivian Thomas ! ” then said Amanda. She 
felt that he ought to be ashamed ; that his dis- 
play of petulance had occurred at least a fort- 
night too soon ; that aside from the general 
fact that she was in the right, as usual, he had put 
himself in the exceptional attitude of ill-treat- 
ing a bride and trying to spoil her pleasure 


7 ° 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


during the tour avowedly taken to give her 1 
pleasure. 

“ What of ? ” asked Vivian, shutting his eyes. 

“ Of the way you’re acting,” promptly an- 
swered Amanda. “ If you were a little boy 
you’d deserve a whipping. As you’re supposed 
to be a man ” 

“ Only supposed to be ? ” sarcastically put in 
the depreciated young gentleman. 

“ Well, act like a man, then! ” said Amanda 
in a biting tone. 

“ You’re acting like a shrew,” he returned, 
not entirely without reason, for the girl-wife 
had worked herself up to quite a pretty rage. 
Yet, as is plain, the blame was his, and in his 
heart he knew it. But since he had evoked a 
display of temper he had a mind to bring her to 
the stool of repentance. As well now as later. 

Amanda, upon her side was reminded that 
Vivian’s mother had spoiled him, and she fan- 
cied that the time had come for her to estab- 
lish the supremacy over him that was essential 
to the happiness of both. So mixed are the 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 71 

motives that direct any one of our actions that 
it is possible there lay side by side with this 
lofty determination of the spirited young 
woman a wish to prove her husband ; to find 
out if he had strength of character sufficient to 
hold his own against her and bring her to the 
point he evidently aimed toward, of coaxing 
him into good humor. There was no sugges- 
tion of any such weakness in her next words. 

“ It’s no use to talk sense to you,” she re- 
marked, as if considering ways and means. 
“ Because you haven’t got common sense. Ma 
always said that.” 

One can pardon reproaches provoked by the 
occasion, but a deliberate accusation delivered 
at second hand has the weight of society be- 
hind it. And the affront was the greater in 
this instance, in that Vivian had considered 
“Aunt Nellie” his firm friend. He turned a 
trifle pale, and rising to his feet began walking 
slowly up and down the floor. After a few 
strides he paused in front of Amanda and 
said : 


7 2 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


“I guess your mother was right — if she 
meant I hadn’t good sense when I wanted to 
marry you. I don’t know as I’ve ever shown 
myself much of a fool, otherwise.” 

And then — it was only eight days since the 
ceremony, and they were both so young — 
somehow the quarrel died out, and they 
patched up a peace, and went to Clairmont 
after all, in a great hurry, and with spirits 
considerably ruffled. But neither of them 
enjoyed the day. 

After that a great many things went wrong. 
There was money enough to pay their ex- 
penses for a month or so, but none to waste ; 
and they wasted it. Accustomed to the use 
of carriages, as a matter of course neither of 
them thought of economizing in this line, until 
confronted with an appalling livery-bill. They 
did not know how to order a dinner a la carte , 
until they learned by costly experience, and 
the fees they bestowed upon the servants, 
although seemingly a trifle at the time, were 
matters of grave moment when the sum total 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


73 

of their expenditures for the month came 
under discussion. 

It had been the plan to remain away six 
weeks, but upon the thirtieth day Vivian came 
up to his wife, who was talking with some 
other ladies upon the porch of the Grand 
Union Hotel — they were then at Saratoga — 
and said abruptly : 

“ Dear, can I speak with you a minute ? ” 

Rather alarmed, Amanda accompanied him 
to a retired spot, and put herself in a listening 
attitude. It was an awkward minute for Viv- 
ian. He was the soul of generosity, and noth- 
ing gratified him more than to give to others 
pleasure, when it cost him no effort. Yet here 
he was in a deuce of a hole, and under the 
necessity of making a humiliating explanation 
to the person whom of all others he found it 
hard to confess to. 

“ Well ? ” said Amanda, rather impatiently, 
as he fidgeted about without saying anything. 

“ Well, my — dearest,” said poor Vivian, with 
pathos, turning out an empty pocket, “ we are 


74 


• SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


in a fix. We’ve spent rhoney a little too fast, 
and have only this left ! ” And he held up to 
view a five-dollar bill, and two silver quarters. 

Amanda gave a gasp, and then collected her 
mental forces. She had a fund of practical 
common sense in her nature, and now when 
she summoned it for the first time it responded 
to call. The first impression her husband’s 
confidence made upon her was to arouse a 
slight contempt, not attended to at the instant, 
but unconsciously stored away to be used on 
other occasions. When our friends gracefully 
ignore our blunders and follies is it to be sup- 
posed that they have really been blind to what 
they gave no evidence of perceiving? As well 
hope that the stone we flung into the wayside 
stream was totally lost when the ripples ceased, 
and that it found no home in the bed beneath. 

“ I have some money,” said Amanda, hast- 
ily. “ Do we owe for hotel bills ? ” 

“ No, I’ve just settled up everything. It 
was that opened my eyes. I had no idea I 
was so nearly broke.” 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


75 

“ Then we can get home — I reckon — if we 
start right off. I have fifty dollars that mother 
gave me, the last thing. For ‘ extras,’ she said. 
Perhaps she meant this.” 

She could not help the little fling. It was 
too hard to use this money, which she had re- 
served for a special purpose. 

Vivian bit his lip and turned his back for a 
moment ; but what was the use of making a 
fuss now? He was thankful upon the whole 
to get out of a bad scrape. It wouldn’t be 
Amanda if she didn’t say something unpleas- 
ant. 

Ah, Vivian, has it come to this already ? It 
seems the scars of certain little passages at 
arms have not faded away. 

Upon a warm, sunshiny day in June they 
came home. Benvenew was in order, owing 
to the efforts of the two mothers, and Mrs. 
Powell’s four-seated wagon was waiting at the 
little station, and her genial face smiled a wel- 
come from the back seat. 

“ Darling mother ! ” murmured Amanda, 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


76 

yielding to the clasp of her mother’s arms, and 
for one instant feeling as if the past month 
with its bewildering experiences, was all a wild 
dream, and she a child again, careless, irre- 
sponsible, and light hearted. The familiar 
sights, of which she had been weary not long 
ago, were charming ; the smiles and nods from 
people they met warmed a heart that had been 
chilled and affrighted many times since she 
had left her Virginia home. Here, in her own 
clime, she was a princess, with friends to love 
her and listen to her with respect and sym- 
pathy. 

They forded a stream and came to the old 
mill, standing half-buried in the marsh. Part 
of the roof was off and the rank, clambering 
vine of the wild grape had reached up and 
hung over the sides in graceful festoons. 
Their appearance started up a number of yel- 
low butterflies that had been fluttering over 
the stream, and now rose in the air like a 
shower of golden sparks. 

“ How beautiful it all is,” said Amanda. “ I 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


77 

am glad to be home again. But where is Alex 
taking us ? ” 

“To Benvenew, of course,” Mrs. Powell an- 
swered. “ Why, Mandy, dear, didn’t you want 
to go right there, or would you ruther go 
home fur to-night? We thought probably 
you’d both prefer — but the laws knows I’d 
be glad to have you both come back with 
me.” 

“ Why, ma, I forgot ! ” said Amanda. “ And 
so I’m to begin my housekeeping right off. I 
don’t know enough about it to take care of that 
big place.” 

“You’ll have Ellen Digby to cook,” said 
Mrs. Powell anxiously, “ and little Admonia.” 

“ Admonia ! ” exclaimed Vivian, looking 
around in some indignation from the front 
seat. “ I can’t have that harum-scarum crea- 
ture on the place.” 

“ You know Ellen really is a good servant,” 
Mrs. Powell explained, apologetically. “ And 
she won’t come without the child. Admonia’s 
twelve now, and she’s really not so bad. She 


78 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

can be trained. There wasn’t anybody eise we 
could lay hands on.” ' 

“ Never mind, rna, Admonia ’ll do well 
enough,” interposed Amanda. “ She’s a funny 
little thing, and I rather like her.” 

“ Ex — actly ! ” Vivian observed, with an ac- 
cent lately acquired. “ I imagine Amanda 
training anybody.” 

We all have our secret pet vanities which 
undiscriminating persons, seeing only our 
surface beauties, are perpetually wounding. 
Amanda’s vanity was a wish to be acknowl- 
edged sensible and practical. Beautiful, she 
knew herself to be, and to hear of that was an 
old story ; but her executive ability was not yet 
proved, and she was very sensitive upon this 
point. And herein Vivian blundered. It did 
not occur to him that he hurt her feelings by 
depreciating her executive powers. He had 
been used to regarding her as a pretty play- 
thing, something to be petted and disciplined 
alternately. That she had an ambition to be 
something more was what he had not yet dis- 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


7 9 

covered. Perhaps the idea was one that he 
would have to blindly grope his way toward ; 
for “ we can only comprehend that of which 
we have the beginnings in ourselves,” and in 
the handsome, suave, popular young Virginian 
the germ of common sense and good judgment 
was small ; so very much smaller than his little 
world believed it to be. 

“ Mandy is a leetle apt to spoil the young 
niggers,” said her peace-making mother. “ But 
then she wuz always so powerful fond o’ chil- 
dren.” 

Amanda patted her mother’s shoulder, while 
a far-away look came into her eyes as she 
fixed them on a distant hill, where the newly 
plowed earth lay darkly red against the ten- 
der sky-tints, and the sun swept down upon 
one spot, covered with young wheat, and 
spread over it like the caressing touch of a 
golden hand. 

She was passionately fond of children — this 
fiery, tender-hearted woman, who showed so 
jnany prickles to the grown people who ap- 


8o 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


proached her incautiously. And Vivian was 
not. So much the more diplomatic, so much 
the more polished, so full of gentleness toward 
women and forbearance toward their trouble- 
some little ones — was it possible that it was he 
who failed in patience and kindness, and the 
froward Amanda who must be credited with 
the possession of both, when helpless hands 
were stretched out toward her? Fauquier 
County would have shaken its head over such 
a question. Fauquier County said that Vivian 
Thomas was the mildest and best humored 
young man in the world except when things 
happened that he had a right to be angry 
about ; but that Amanda Powell was rather 
too spunky and high-strung for any man ex- 
cept a saint to get along with peaceably. For 
her mother’s sake — and also, a little in spite 
of its preternaturally wise judgment — for the 
sake of certain winning ways of her own, the 
county people liked her; but Vivian, they 
adored. 

And so, overshadowed by this disadvantage, 


THE WIFE OF LO THA RIO g 1 

of which she was not quite unconscious, the 
young wife descended from the wagon, helped 
out as gracefully and tenderly as he had helped 
her out of another vehicle the day we first saw 
her, by her courteous husband, and entered 
the door of her new home. 

The first person they laid eyes upon was 
the shock-headed, wild-eyed little creature 
called Admonia, who dropped a flower-pot 
she was carrying through the hall, and with- 
out stopping to pick up the pieces, raced to 
" the kitchen, shouting : 

“ Mis’ Mandy and Mr. Vivian done come 
home, fur shore ! Whoopy ! Ain’t I glad ! 
Now, we’uns gwine ter have times ! ” 

Admonia was a prophet. 

6 


82 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


II. 

“ ADMONIA ! ” called a woman’s voice, and in 
a twinkling the owner followed and stopped in 
the last one of the long row of outbuildings 
that spread beyond the dining-room of Ben- 
venew. 

It was a mere shed, enclosed on three sides 
and open at the end, the sky showing through 
holes in the roof. The rough boarding that 
answered for a floor was broken in many 
places, and dirt and confusion reigned every- 
where. Upon a stool sat a shock-headed, wild- 
eyed darkey girl of twenty or so, plucking the 
feathers from a couple of fowls, and throwing 
them upon the floor. Her heavy under-lip fell 
and her eyes rolled as the imperative tones of 
her mistress smote upon her ear, and she arose 
quickly, a cloud of feathers falling from her 
unspeakably dirty dress, and stood dangling a 
half plucked fowl, her dark brown face so im- 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 83 

mersed in gloom that all the features seemed 
to have run together, the whites of her eyes 
and her broad yellow teeth giving her the 
appearance of a bank of much soiled and partly 
melted snow. 

“Admonia,” said her mistress, pausing in 
the doorway, “where is Nellie?” 

Laws, Mis’ Mandy, I dunno. I hain’t saw 
de chile sence Mr. Thomas tuk her.” 

“ When was that ? ” Amanda’s voice had a 
peculiar ring which the girl recognized, and 
knew the cause of. Her dusky face softened 
into an expression of sympathy, and with the 
fluency of her race she uttered the first consol- 
ing thought that came into her head. 

“ Now, Mis’ Mandy, honey, don’ yo’ tak’ on 
— li’le Nellie she all safe ’nuff ; her pa done 
tak’ her wid him up ter he room on’y lettle 
bit ago. She was pesterin’ him ter show her 
de stuffed owl what he done brung home frum 
Ryburg, an’ he jes tuk her wid him ter show 
her. He — he all right, Mis’ Mandy.” 

The last sentence was spoken in a lower 


84 


SOUTHERN HEAR TS 


tone, and the harum-scarum girl, whom every- 
one except her mother and her mistress con- 
sidered irreclaimably rough and wild, averted 
her eyes from Amanda’s pale face, and sitting 
down again began industriously plucking her 
fowls. 

Without another word, but with one sharply 
indrawn breath that left her lips white, 
Amanda entered the house and ascended the 
stairs. As she drew near a rear room on the 
second floor sounds reached her ear that 
brought a flaming color into her cheeks and 
made her hasten her steps. The frightened, 
sobbing tones of a little child came from be- 
hind the closed door of her husband’s room, 
mingled with a half articulate but apparently 
angry growl of a deep masculine voice. 

Amanda turned the handle of the door with 
an expression that boded ill for the person 
who had evoked it. The door resisted her 
pressure. It was locked. Then, in a second, 
all the smouldering anxiety of the mother’s 
heart leaped into furious flame. 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 85 

“ Open this door ! ” she commanded. There 
was no answer. The sobbing ceased. 

“ Mother ! ” called the child. 

Amanda shook the door and pushed against 
it with all her strength. “ Open this door, or 
I’ll break it down ! ” So her grandfather might 
have thundered out an order to some refrac- 
tory sailor on board his own good ship. The 
only reply was an oath. The man in his sober 
senses addressed by any one, especially a 
woman, in such a manner, must have been 
mild indeed, had he refrained from swearing. 
But a mother, maddened by such fears as 
lacerated this woman’s heart, takes nothing 
into account but her own feelings. With swift 
steps she turned into her own room, brought 
thence a large and heavy hammer and gave 
the door the strongest blow her arms were 
capable of throwing against it. Another — and 
another. The lock yielded, and Amanda, hold- 
ing the hammer under her left arm, flew into 
the room. 

Could anything excuse or justify such vio- 


86 SOUTHERN HEARTS 

lence in a wife? Would not the man who had 
met force with force and turning upon her, 
knocked her down, have been not only cleared 
but applauded by any court in a Christian 
country? And in Virginia, of all other places, 
the laws are made for the protection of men ; 
and public sentiment is in harmony with the 
State’s code. 

Vivian Thomas must then either be despised 
by those of us who see him leaning against the 
wardrobe in a passive attitude, while the 
woman who had vowed to love, honor, and 
obey him, ten years before, effected this head- 
long entrance into his own sacred stronghold, 
or he must be considered a saint, enduring 
with superhuman patience the tantrums of a 
domineering wife. The critic may take his 
choice of opinions; only, let us note that the 
handsome man now averting his eyes from 
Amanda’s scorching glance is not exactly the 
frank, fresh-looking fellow who brought his 
young bride to Benvenew. All the graceful 
bearing, the nobility of outline, and that 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 87 

indescribable beauty Nature confers upon her 
favorite sons, are still here. The silky brown 
mustache droops over sensitive red lips with 
tender, downward curves ; the white brow is 
placid, and the nostrils delicate and fine. But 
the entire effect is different. A slight altera- 
tion of a few details has changed everything. 
The dark eyes have faded to a dull hazel, and 
the whites have taken on a yellowish tinge. 
The cheeks have rather too much color, the 
flush extending to the nose. In a word, Viv- 
ian’s countenance, while retaining the refine- 
ment that seems a part of the very flesh of 
some organisms and independent of those 
shaping forces that ennoble or mar the faces 
of most people, betrayed some deterioration of 
the whole man. 

He seemed rather embarrassed than enraged 
as Amanda, panting from her exertions and 
trembling from the terrible tension of her 
nerves, swept past him and picked up a little 
girl cowering in the corner. 

Without staying for another look or word 


88 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


she clasped the child in her arms and left the 
room ; the very atmosphere charged with the 
contempt that emanated from her haughty 
spirit and which Vivian felt, even in his dulled 
condition, to the core of his being. 

She carried the little girl to her own room, 
and with hurried motions bathed her face, 
changed her dress, and put on her hat and 
cloak, all the while uttering low, endearing 
words, and pressing tender kisses on the little 
upturned face which was lovely as an angel’s, 
with great, dark eyes looking out from a 
thicket of golden-brown curls. 

“Are we going to grandma’s, mother?” 
Nellie asked, as Amanda changed her wrapper 
for a black silk dress and took up her bonnet 
and gloves. Once before, about a year ago, 
after a scene between father and mother, 
which had deeply impressed itself upon the 
child’s memory, she had been taken in the 
carriage to her grandmother’s, and had re- 
mained there a week, her mother with her. 
It had been a week of rare delight, shadowed 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 89 

only by two things: her grandmother’s re- 
markable gravity, and the indisposition of her 
adored mother. 

“Yes, darling,” Amanda answered hastily, 
as she threw some things into a satchel and 
arising from her kneeling posture before a 
chest of drawers, left the room with her child, 
locking the door behind her. 

They went straight to the barn, where 
Amanda hitched up old Queenie, her own horse, 
to a rickety old phaeton, and drove out into 
the yard, Admonia holding the gate open and 
sniffling audibly as she muttered : 

“ Goo’bye, Mis’ Mandy ; goo’bye, li’le Nellie. 
Wish’t I wuz gwine wif ye, so I does.” 

“ Be a good girl, Admonia,” said her mis- 
tress, bending down and giving the black 
hand a cordial shake. “ Look after things as 
well as you can. You and your mother are 
all I have to depend on now, you know, since 
Pete is gone.” 

“ Good-bye, Admonia ! ” called Nellie’s liquid 
tones. “ Please take care of my Bantam hen ! ” 


90 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


With the blessed elasticity of childhood she 
had already partly recovered from the distress 
of the morning, and was able to entertain 
charming visions of the pleasure before her. 
But although there is in a child a superficial 
light-heartedness, so that we are led to flatter 
ourselves that its woes are soon over, it is cer- 
tain that injuries inflicted in the spirit of in- 
justice, sink deeply into the soul, and not 
through inability to forgive, but through in- 
ability to forget, the young heart once wound- 
ed in the tender spot of confidence, never 
again can put forth vigorous shoots of affec- 
tion toward the person who has affronted it. 
Strange as it seemed to the world that in after 
years Vivian Thomas’ fondness for his daugh- 
ter never evoked in her any corresponding 
demonstration, valid reason might have been 
found by one acquainted with the experience 
of this and other mornings, why Nellie always 
listened to the praises bestowed upon her pop- 
ular parent with a pensive smile, and why, 
in her dutiful attention to him, there was a 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


91 

reserve and hesitancy widely different from 
the cordiality of a relation free from doubt 
and fear. 

Mrs. Powell met them on the front porch. 
She had on her sun-bonnet and gardening- 
gloves, and behind her stalked Alex, armed 
with her rake and hoe, his features express- 
ing the contempt of his stronger nature 
for the woman’s tools he carried, tempered 
with a respectful sort of indulgence to- 
ward the fancies of the best woman in the 
world. 

Ten years had passed lightly over Mrs. 
Powell’s fair countenance. At sixty she was 
a handsome and vigorous old lady, the wear 
and tear of life, felt only through sympathy 
with the troubles of others, showing mainly 
in a thinning of the silver curls over her 
temples, and a few lines about her true, mild, 
blue eyes. 

Her first look told her that something was 
wrong with Amanda, and without any great 
strain upon her reasoning powers she under- 


SO UTHEKN HE A R TS 


92 

stood that the trouble had reference to little 
Nellie. Nothing else brought that tense ex- 
pression to the mouth of her beautiful daugh- 
ter, nor kindled deep in her black eyes the 
glare that told of unendurable suffering and 
unquenchable resentment. 

“ I wuz jes’ goin’ to pot a few roses afore 
frost gits ’em,” she said, after affectionate 
greetings had been exchanged. “ Will ye set 
out hyar on the bench awhile, honey, an’ we 
kin talk whilst I wurk ? ” 

She hoped that in the course of a little quiet 
talk Amanda’s fierce mood would give way to 
soothing influences, and that the injudicious 
things the impulsive woman was apt to utter 
when excited might remain upon this occasion 
unsaid. But now, as always, the conservative 
policy of the good woman only modified, but 
could not repress the burning indignation of 
a spirit that could easier pardon great injuries 
to itself, than the slightest wrong done to one 
who was incapable of self-defense. 

Leaning her head back against the trunk 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


93 


of the ancient magnolia tree her grandfather 
had planted here, Amanda watched her mother 
dig and fuss among the roses and listened 
with slight response to her cheerful sentences, 
biding her time. 

Nellie flitted about like a humming bird, 
coming every now and then to lay her little 
head against her mother’s arm with a caress- 
ing touch that spoke well for the relation 
between the two. She stayed to carry water 
in her own tiny watering pot, when at last 
her grandmother could no longer make excuse 
to stop out of doors, and with a secret sigh, led 
her daughter into the house. 

“ Well, honey,” she said, with an attempt at 
treating matters lightly. “ You’re not feeling 
jes’ right to-day. Now, try to forgit all about 
whatever’s been plaguin’ you, and res’ yo’self 
on the sofa, whilst I go an’ see about some- 
thin’ nice fur dinner.” 

“ No, no, mother. You know well enough 
Aunt Liza don’t need any suggestions about 
her dinner. And I want to talk to you. I 


9 4 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


must . You’ll be sorry if you don’t listen to 
me.” 

“ Don’t I always listen to you, Mandy ? ” 

“ Yes, mother, but you don’t always listen 
willingly. You seem to think that if things 
are not spoken about that it’s the same as if 
they didn’t exist. You think I’ll stand things 
better if I’m quiet about them.” 

“ No, my dear child ; dear knows I’m ready 
an’ willin’ to hyar all you want to say if it 
eases yo’ mind any. But, honey, I do hate to 
hyar yo’ say sech hard things about yo’ hus- 
band as you’ve said to me before when you 
wuz put out.” 

“ Put out ! ” repeated Amanda, with scorn- 
ful emphasis. “ Oh, mother, why won’t you 
see the thing as it is ? A wife may bear with 
her husband and not let anybody know what 
she goes through, but a mother with a help- 
less little child to defend, will be up in arms 
against a brute, and if anybody says she is 
wrong to take her child away from a father 
that abuses her, why, they can say it, I know 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


95 

in my own heart what’s right, and I’ll not take 
it out in talk. I’ll act.” 

“ Mandy, darlin’,” pleaded her mother. 
“ Shorely you’re exaggeratin’. Vivian’s got 
his faults, and fur be it frum me to defend 
’em. I said to Jane Thomas, only last week, 
at the Bush Meetin’, that if Vivian could only 
be persuaded to come up to the bench then 
an’ thar an’ promise to leave off it’d make me 
happier’n I’ve been since you wuz married. 
And she said — I ain’t tellin’ you to rile you 
’gainst Vivian’s ma ; yo’ know she feels fur 
him, same’s I feel most fur you — says Jane; 
‘ If Mandy’d ashow’d a leetle more fondness 
Vivian he’d a been different. He always wuz 
dependent on affection, an’ a lovin’ woman 
could hev done anythin’ with him. Mandy’s 
been cold as a stun, an’ it’s no wonder’ — I 
mean t’say she said it wuz a wonder ’t he 
didn't go after other women.” 

A hot color rushed into Amanda’s cheeks, 
and she spread her hands widely, with a ges- 
ture of repulsion, “ Don’t take the trouble to 


SO U THERN HE A R TS 


96 

try to hide it,” she said in a low tone. “ Do 
you think I don’t know what he races down to 
Richmond for every month or two — and where 
all the money goes to ? Benvenew falling to 
pieces, Nellie and I with no clothes excepting 
what you give us, and he — gambler and liber- 
tine ! ” 

“ Mandy, Mandy, hush ! ” begged Mrs. Pow- 
ell, alarmed at a much more forcible expres- 
sion than Amanda had ever yet permitted her- 
self. 

“You know it’s true, mother,” Amanda 
answered in a softer manner. “You and I 
and his mother know all about it. Of course 
Mrs. Thomas blames me, and upholds him. 
If it hadn’t been for her interference and con- 
tinually taking his part, I might have made 
him behave himself better. I know all Fau- 
quier County believes he’s the injured innocent. 
I’m outspoken and he’s deceitful. With his 
soft, smooth manner outside it’s not surprising 
people think as they do ; that my temper 
drove him to drink. And then he never 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


97 

gets so far gone in public as he does at 
home.” 

“ Honey, that’s somethin’ to be thankful fur, 
shorely ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Amanda with a strange 
look. “ Appearances are so much. Why, 
even our own minister took it upon himself, 
not long ago, to read me a sort of veiled 
lecture about the beauty of meekness in a 
woman. I’m tired — tired, tired of being eter- 
nally misunderstood, and of this sort of * devil 
and angel ’ game — such as the children play — 
where he’s the angel and I’m the devil.” 

Mrs. Powell rocked back and forth softly, her 
placid face expressing more concern than had 
ever appeared there before. There was a 
sustained earnestness about Amanda’s bitter 
outpouring different from the hysterical anger 
she was used to show upon the occasions when 
she and her child appeared with their traveling 
bag at the Powell homestead. 

“ Dearie,” she said hesitatingly, “ do you 
pray about it ? ” 

7 


9 8 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


“We had better let that subject alone,” 
Amanda answered quietly. “ I might hurt 
your feelings, and I don’t want to do that, 
mother dear. Poor ma!- It isn’t your fault. 
You didn’t want me to have him.” 

“No, honey, but now you’re married thar 
ain’t nothin’ else to do but to b’ar it. Fur the 
child’s sake, Mandy, live as peaceable as you 
kin. Think how dretful it is fur her to see 
you two on bad terms with one another.” 

“The child! Yes, I should think — for her 
sake,” cried Amanda, her wrath flashing forth 
again. “ It is of her I’m thinking more than 
anything. Vivian Thomas hasn’t any more 
love for his child than he has for anything out- 
side of his own pleasure. He even abuses 
her ! ” And then she told of the scene of the 
morning. 

“ Poor little thing — poor little darling,” said 
the grandmother indignantly ; but adding in a 
soothing tone: “After all, Mandy, you 
k.iow he is the child’s father, and he maybe 
didn’t hurt her much,” 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


99 


“ What right had he to even go near her 
when he was in that condition ? But, mother, 
I tell you, it’s not only when he’s the worse 
for liquor. I’ve known him strike her at other 
times. He’s cruel. There was always a streak 
of cruelty in his nature. You won’t believe it 
— nobody’d think it to see him, but I tell you 
he is born to impose on weaker people. 
Nellie is afraid of him, and he makes her little 
life miserable. I can’t stand it. People have 
no right to bring a child into this world and 
make it miserable. It’s my duty to take her 
away from such a father.” 

“ Yo’ can’t do that,” said Mrs. Powell. 

“ I can. I can go away and take her with 
me.” 

“ Dearie, now yoTe talkin’ wild. Leave yo’ 
husband ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Amanda, vehemently. She 
got up and began to pace the floor. It was 
almost impossible for her to sit still, when ex- 
cited, and her mother had long since accus- 
tomed herself to seeing her daughter moving 


IOO 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


back and forth with hurried yet measured steps, 
her hands clasped tightly in front of her, while 
she talked in tones always growing lower and 
clearer as her mind became more energetic. 

“ I’ve been thinking of this for a long time. 
I took a resolution last time it — it happened, 
that the next time he did anything to Nellie, 
I’d shake the dust of his place from my feet. 
It’s not so much his drinking, mother — though 
I believe any woman has a right to leave a 
man that drinks, and that if there’s danger of 
having children by him, it’s her duty to leave 
him — but it’s what he is altogether. I despise 
Vivian Thomas.” 

“ I wish I knowed what to say to you. I 
know you ain’t right, Mandy. It’s a woman’s 
place to stay by the man she marries, through 
thick and thin. ‘ Fur better or worse,’ reck, 
’lect.” 

“ That was the old idea — the idea of people 
who made up the form for the marriage cere- 
mony. It’s a dead letter in our law to-day, and 
it’s a dead letter in society, too. Does any- 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


lot 


body expect men and women to stay tied all 
their lives to what’s horrible ? These are 
modern times, mother.” 

“ I’m afeared this comes o’ that visit o’ yo’n 
to Chicago, to Cousin Lois’ folks,” lamented 
her good mother. “ I dunno nothin’ ’bout 
sech notions. But I do know somethin’ ’bout 
what people think in Fauquier County. A 
woman that leaves her husband puts herself in 
the wrong, and no matter if she’s innocent as 
the driven snow there’s always a shadow 
hangin’ to her. Jes’ stop and think what 
folks’d say, my dear ! ” 

“ Aye,” assented Amanda, bitterly. “ I 
know what they’d say well enough. But Fau- 
quier County isn’t the world. Why, mother, 
out beyond these narrow boundaries of 
Virginia there’s free territory where women 
own their own souls, and can think for them- 
selves. They can even obey their own con- 
science if it leads them to go against the 
minister and the church.” 

Mrs. Powell raised a hand that trembled and 


102 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


put it up to her temple with a despairing 
gesture. Tears, almost strangers to her gentle, 
serene eyes, gathered and rolled down her 
cheeks. 

“ Pore Mandy,” she said in a choking voice. 
“ You’s fur and away from any ground whar I 
kin meet up with you. I’ve knowed fur a spell 
back you ain’t took no interest in the church, 
and I'm gre’tly afeared that’s at the bottom o’ 
your troubles. If you desert the Lord He’ll 
desert you, honey. It’s shore as I’m settin’ 
hyar.” 

Amanda had kneeled down and pressed her 
mother’s head against her shoulder ; but as the 
good woman regarded her sadly, somewhat as 
she might have regarded a sinner about to be 
prayed for in her congregation, a melancholy, 
half-mocking smile succeeded to the concern 
on the worn, handsome face upon a level with 
her own. 

“ Do you think if I had worked for the fair 
last month, and had gone regularly to the 
sewing society all this while that it might 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 103 

have helped to make a different man of 
Vivian ? ” 

“ Maybe not, dearie; though the Lord 
wurks by means, an' we can’t tell,” answered 
her mother, naively. 

“ Well, mother,” Amanda said, “ we can’t 
think just alike about some things. You’re 
good. You’d be good whether you were in 
the Second Baptist Church or in Egypt squat- 
ting before a hideous image. And I must be 
myself. I must do what I think right, no mat- 
ter what other people think or say. And I 
think it right to take my child away from a 
father that ill-treats her, and who sets her a 
frightful example in every way.” 

“ Why, you wouldn’t want to cast such a 
slur as that on yo’ daughter. People’d throw 
it up to her always — that her father an’ 
mother didn’t live together! ” 

“ But if she was so much happier in other 
ways that she could afford to stand the talk, 
mother? ” 

“ No, Mandy, no. Thar ain’t no woman 


1 04 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

that’s come uv a good family and been raised 
proper, an’ to feel like a nice woman nat’rally 
does feel, but what’d ruther suffer anything 
else’n creation than to hev the finger o’ scorn 
pointed at her an’ know she or any o’ her 
family’d done anything to desarve it.” 

Mrs. Powell had been wrought up to a point 
where her feelings demanded expression, 
and she continued with an earnestness and sin- 
cerity that had the effect of the finest elo- 
quence. 

“ Even if thar air what yo’ call 4 extenuatin’ 
circumstances,’ you couldn’t do this thing with- 
out bringin’ ’pon yo’self the very hardest trial 
you could be set to endure. You couldn’t be 
in any company without thinkin’ uneasily, 
4 Would these people be willin’ I sh’d be 
amongst ’em if they knowed how ’twas with 
me ? ’ In church you’d fancy every wurd the 
preacher utters p’inted straight at you. And 
let alone yo’self, what wouldn’t you go through 
thinkin’ people wuz slightin’ Nellie because o’ 
you ? ” 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


10 S 

“ Mother, mother ! ” Amanda cried, “ you mis- 
take me. You’re exaggerating the thing. I — 
I didn’t mean divorce ! ” 

“ No, you don’t mean it now, but it’d come 
to that. I feel it in my bones,” said Mrs. 
Powell, solemnly. 

“ Well, now, dear, dear mother, listen to 
me,” her daughter pleaded. “ Suppose that— 
finally, that was the only way to save myself — 
to — to protect myself from — suppose we were 
in another place, in a northern city, where no- 
body knows me ? ” 

“ Thar ain’t no place on the face of the ’arth 
so remote but what talk’d find you out.” 

“ Shall we be martyrs, then, to a few old 
women’s tongues ? Am I to take the risk of ” — 
Amanda bent and finished her sentence in her 
mother’s ear. 

“ Honey, shorely ye kin leave that in the 
good Lord’s hands! ” 

“ I’d have been in a nice fix if I’d have left 
it in his hands all these years,” said Amanda 
Thomas, with a look so skeptical and full of 


SOUTHERN- HEARTS 


106 

accusation against something seen only in her 
mind’s eye, that her mother’s pink color faded 
and left her pretty cheeks white. “ That’s 
where our creeds differ, mother. I believe in 
not leaving things to chance.” 

“ I said leavin’ ’em to the Lord,” the old 
lady amended. 

“ It’s the same thing,” said Amanda, reck- 
lessly. 

“Oh, Mandy, Mandy, it gives me a cold chill 
fur to hear you talk so.” 

“ I won’t talk so, then. Heaven knows I 
don’t want to worry you any more than can be 
helped. But let’s look at this thing reasonably. 
First, about Nellie. The child must and shall 
have a chance for a happy, peaceful life. She 
mustn’t be tyrannized over, and hampered, and 
kept down ; she ought to be well educated and 
have a fair chance in the world. And for that 
she must be away from here — and away from 
her father.” 

“ Why, I sh’d think her pa wuz the ve’y 
one to help her to an eddication. Vivian’s 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


107 

smart enough, an’ ain’t he been to col- 
lege?” 

“Yes,, he’s been to college, and he can sing 
sweetly, the girls say, and play the flute, and 
read Horace’s odes in the original, and dance 
better than any other man in the county,” 
said Amanda, despairingly. “ But does all that 
make him a good father, or fit him to super- 
vise Nellie’s education? ” 

“ I dunno what more you kin want, dear,’ v 
answered her perplexed parent. 

“ Well ! There are certain moral qualities. 
We medn’t go into it. To come to myself. 
I’m a young woman yet, mother, only twenty- 
eight. Is my whole life to be ruined for this 
one mistake, made when I was a mere child, 
and ignorant of the world as a baby ? ” 

“You forgit. A woman’s life’s sp’iled if she 
leaves her husband. Thar ain’t no sech thing 
as takin’ a fresh start with a livin’ husband in 
the background o’ your life. He’d be croppin’ 
up yar an’ thar an’ ev’ywhar, wors’n a field 
o’ nettles. Do you reckon Vivian’s goin’ to 


1 08 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

lose sight o’ you ? And, moreover, Mandy, if 
you sh’d go to the dretful pass o’ seekin’ a di- 
vorce, wouldn’t the law give him the child ? ” 

Amanda started, and bent her black brows 
fiercely. This was the first argument her 
mother had used that she was unable to answer. 

“ Of course the laws are all in favor of the 
men. Yes, they would give my innocent dar- 
ling — my baby that is part of my own flesh and 
blood, that I’ve nourished at my breast, that 
I’ve suffered for and lived for these nine years — 
to a besotted, selfish, immoral man who would 
never fulfill one duty toward her, and who 
doesn’t care for her the worth of his little finger. 
The only thing is that I don’t believe he’d 
want her.” 

Mrs. Powell shook her head. “ You can’t 
depend on that. Men always want the last 
thing you might s’pose’d be any use to ’em. 
They want their own way, you see.” 

“ Then the only thing I can do is to keep 
ft a secret where I go. There are places 
enough.” 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


109 

“ An’ how’d ye git along, poor child ? How’d 
ye do cooped up’n some mean leetle place 
without no run fur Nellie, an’ without horses, 
nor anybody to do a han’s turn fur ye? And, 
dearie, you know, even though I’d ruther you’d 
stay hyar by yo’ duty, wharever you go my 
lov’d foller you, an’ I’d always do all in my 
power. But money’s the one thing we don’t 
hev. If you’re somewhar ’t you hev to put yo’ 
han’ in yo’ pocket fur ev’y livin’ thing, even to 
an egg, or a slip o’ parsley, how ’pon ’arth’ll 
you do ? ” 

“ I mean to work, dear mother. I can sew, 
and embroider, and do lots of things,” said 
Amanda, spreading her white hands and look- 
ing at them meditatively ; not dreaming, poor, 
thing, of the thousands and thousands of other 
defter and more experienced hands stretched 
forth in the localities she thought abounding in 
lucrative work, for the merest shadow of em- 
ployment, and the paltriest sort of recompense. 

In Mrs. Powell’s imagination Amanda was a 
rarely talented and capable woman, able to 


no 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


perform wonders, yet her shrewd common sense 
suggested difficulties that Amanda could not 
but recognize when they were pointed out, 
averse as she was to consider any details made 
against her plan. 

They talked over the matter from every point 
of view, the elder woman reiterating the same ar- 
guments she had ysed already, and the younger 
one meeting them continually with that free, lib- 
eral interpretation of the gospel of individuality 
which youth has always flourished in the face 
of age and conservatism. 

Mrs. Powell held out as stanchly as only a 
good, bigoted Christian woman, devoutly living 
up to the public opinion of an insular, moun- 
tain village, can hold out against modern 
heresies striking at the very foundation of her 
social system, and her religious beliefs. But 
Amanda had been for a very long time work- 
ing herself up to her present resolution, and 
she stuck to her purpose with unflinching 
steadfastness, and had by supper-time succeeded 
in convincing her mother that she was in deadly 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


in 


earnest and not to be dissuaded. And after 
she had put Nellie into the great old-fashioned 
bed and tucked the coverlet about her soft, 
warm little throat, she only stayed by her long 
enough to be sure that the child was sound 
asleep, then kissing the curls floating out over 
the pillow, with a fervent affection such as no 
man had ever known from this woman with a 
genius for motherhood, she stole away softly, 
leaving the door ajar, and went back to the 
sitting-room to talk to her mother more 
definitely about the plans she had formed for 
the future. 

But hardly had the two settled down before 
the fire when, with a rattle and a bang, very 
unlike her old-time timidity, Jane Thomas flung 
herself into the room. 

“ Sh — h ! ” said Amanda, as the heavy door 
slammed shut. “You’ll wake Nellie!” She 
got up and set the door partly open again, then 
resumed her seat, pushing the chair away from 
the hearth to make room for her mother-in-law, 
but saying no word of welcome, for she felt 


I 12 


SO U THERN HE A R TS 


that this visit was made with some special dis- 
ciplinary intention toward herself. 

If ever a woman’s face and mien conveyed 
indignation and resentment of the splenetic 
sort, Mrs. Thomas’ meager visage and thin 
figure manifested these sentiments as she fell 
into the chair drawn forward for her, and 
turned her watery-blue eyes upon her son’s 
wife. 

“ Nellie ! — to be shore ! ” she uttered in a 
spiteful whimper. “ Pity but what yo’d hev 
a leetle consideration for other folks ’sides 
that child. Hyar yo’ve done pitched onter 
Vivian and attackted him with hammers an’ 
druv him out’n his own house, an’ made a 
scandal that’ll ring through Fauquier County, 
and the saints above knows what it’s all 
about. I thank the Lord I ain’t got yo’ disposi- 
tion ! ” 

“ You’ve a great deal to be thankful for in 
the way of disposition,” observed Amanda. 
She had closed her lips tightly, resolving to 
maintain absolute silence ; but what woman 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


IJ 3 

can suppress the witty retort when her antag- 
onist exposes a vulnerable point ? 

“ Seems ter me I’d be a leetle mo’ humble, 
consider’n’ what yo’ve done. It’d become 
you ter be thankful ’t yo’ awful temper didn’t 
do no mo’ harm ’n it done. Not but what it 
done ’nuff an’ mo’n I shu’d like ter hev ’pon 
my conscience.” 

“ If you’d take a few of your son’s sins upon 
your conscience it might give you something 
to do.” 

“ Oh, I don’t look fur nothin’ but sass from 
you, ’Mandy Powell. Yo’ve a tongue the 
devil hisself ’d fly frum.” 

“ If Vivian Thomas has run from it you 
must be right,” answered Amanda. 

Mrs. Thomas rocked back and forth till her 
chair creaked with a spiteful sound that seemed 
to her hearers to be an echo of her whining 
voice. She expatiated upon the deplorable 
effects of her daughter-in-law’s fearful outbreak 
of the morning, and warned her that no man 

on earth was called on to put up with such 
8 


i r 4 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

tantrums, and that if she was locked up in the 
lunatic asylum it would be no more than she 
had a right to expect. 

Amanda put a severe break upon her im- 
perious spirit and said no more words in reply 
until at last Mrs. Thomas brought out her 
final taunt, that she had only run away for the 
purpose of getting Vivian to come after her 
and bring her back ; and for this time she was 
mistaken. She would have to stay away a 
mighty long while if she waited for him to 
fetch her, and she’d be glad to creep home 
again by the time everybody cried shame upon 
her. 

Then Amanda arose and stood before her 
adversary, tall and majestic, with her arms 
folded across her swelling chest, and her black 
brows bent in such a frown as made Jane 
Thomas’ cowardly heart flutter, until she 
thought of the impossibility of a personal en- 
counter with this woman, whom she would 
have given half her possessions to conquer 
and humiliate, 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


1 *5 

“ I say to you here and now,” said Amanda, 
using unconsciously an orotund quality of 
voice that, together with her pose, rendered 
her delivery so forceful that her words stamped 
themselves upon the memory of both her 
hearers : “ I have left Vivian Thomas’ roof 

forever. Spread the fact as fast as you please ; 
gloat upon the scandal it will create in this 
gossiping little place, and tear my reputation 
to pieces as fast as you want to. No power 
under Heaven can make me look upon that 
man’s face again, or pass a moment in his com- 
pany ! ” 

For a few seconds there was a hush in the 
air, as if a missile had been thrown, and an ef- 
fect was looked for. People often experience 
this momentary apprehension when some pe- 
culiarly definite and emphatic stand has been 
taken by anyone ; as if definiteness, in this 
changing world, was a crime to bring down 
punishment. 

But effects rarely follow so swiftly as those 
that came upon the heels of Amanda’s decla- 


ii6 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


ration. Hardly had her voice died away when 
her mother arose hastily, crying : 

“ Hark, what ’s that ? ” 

There were sounds of dogs barking, voices 
exclaiming, and the quick, irregular gallop of 
a horse’s feet coming up to the front porch. 
The three women stood looking at each other, 
when a wild figure with eyes starting out of 
its head, wool standing on end, and gown half 
torn from its back, burst into the room, and 
Admonia cried out in a hoarse voice : 

“ Mis’ Mandy, Mis’ Mandy ! Fur de Lawd’s 
sake, Mis’ Mandy — Mr. Vivian done fell off’n 
he’s horse inter Mowbry Gulch an’ b’oke he’s 
neck ! ” 


III. 

Mowbray Gulch was a danger-pit lying 
midway between Sampson’s Tavern and Ben- 
venew. The road narrowed after passing 
Bloomdale, and wound around the spur of the 
Blue Ridges known as Round Peak, in a man- 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


117 

ner only a native could have understood. 
Vivian had traversed the narrow bridle-path 
thousands of times without a thought of dan- 
ger, galloping past at night in that spirit of 
confidence characteristic of a Virginia boy, said 
to be “ born on horseback.” 

The accident must have occurred early in 
the evening, for a passer-by on his way home 
to supper found a hat and whip on the road 
near the edge of the Gulch, and looking down, 
discovered a man’s form on the rocks, twenty 
feet below, lying perfectly motionless, with a 
white face upturned to the sky. 

At least three hours had intervened between 
that and Admonia’s alarm, and when the three 
women arrived in Jane Thomas’ wagon (she 
had wept, and abused her daughter-in-law all 
the way) they had found many neighbors upon 
the scene, and the doctor bending over some- 
thing stretched out on a mattress by the road- 
side. 

“ He is living,” were the words they heard 
as they came up, and Mrs. Thomas broke out 


1 1 8 SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 

into wails of thankfulness, while Mrs. Powell 
breathed more quietly a prayer as grateful. 
Amanda said no word, but a deep sigh exhaled 
from her burdened chest, and she tried to draw 
nearer. A friendly hand held her back. Edgar 
Chamblin’s blue eyes glimmered anxiously in 
the light of the lantern he was holding, and he 
said with kindly insistence : 

“ I wouldn’t go nigh him jes’ yet, Mis’ 
Mandy. We’re goin’ ter tote him ovah t’ 
cousin Evy Smith’s. Her’n is the nighest 
house, an’ Doctor Sowers says he must be 
taken ter the ve’y nighest place.” 

“ Can’t he be taken home ? ” wailed Vivian’s 
mother. “ I mean to my house whar he kin be 
taken cyar uv ? ” with a spiteful look at her 
daughter-in-law. 

The doctor looked up anxiously. Vivian’s 
closed lids had quivered for a second and a 
look of consciousness appeared, then faded 
away. With tender hands he was laid on the 
cot that now arrived and carried over the field 
to Miss Eva Smith’s cottage, where the little 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


119 

bedroom off the parlor had been made ready 
for him, and the best bed was spread with every 
dainty piece of linen the spinster could draw 
from her treasured store. 

So it was upon a lace-trimmed, hemstitched 
pillow-slip that the beautiful head of the in- 
jured man reposed, and over him was spread 
a silk quilt that had long been the pride of 
Miss Evy’s maiden heart, and which she now 
brought forth with a solemn sense of conse- 
cration. 

Miss Evy was a thin, fragile woman, with a 
figure that had once been willowy, but was now 
angular ; blue eyes that once were like forget- 
me-nots, contrasting with tender, coral lips and 
baby blond hair ; but tears shed in secret had 
washed the blue from her eyes and the peachy 
bloom from her oval cheeks, until only a faint 
reminiscence remained of the beauty which 
had captivated Vivian Thomas’ boyish fancy. 
One of the peculiarities of Vivian’s fortune was 
that the women he had wooed and forsaker. 
remained faithful to him till death, cherishing 


120 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


no resentment and seeking no retaliation ; but, 
instead, biding the time when by some act of 
service they could prove the strength of an 
affection that always had in it an element of 
maternal fondness. 

Why some men whose paths through life 
are marked by the broken hearts of women 
should experience from those they injure the 
tenderness and leniency seldom or never ac- 
corded to better but rougher men is something 
only to be explained by the waywardness of 
feminine nature. The majority of women like 
to be martyred, but resent frank abuse. The 
weakly child of the flock easily converts his 
mother into a slave, even though she perceives 
through the veil of feebleness the force of 
egotism. And in the same way the man of 
soft manners, winning voice, and insinuating 
tongue, may play the tyrant at his pleasure, and 
be admired and adored by women whose slav- 
ishness is a conscious concession to some 
imagined delicacy that appeals to their mater- 
nal instinct. 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO . 


1 2 I 


In the humble heart of Miss Evy her girl- 
hood’s hero had maintained his place, not- 
withstanding her conscientious efforts after 
Vivian’s marriage to think of him as something 
entirely apart from her life. Thinking of him 
was a privilege she allowed herself under cer- 
tain restrictions. She thought of him when 
she prayed, when she sang in the choir on 
Sunday and Wednesday nights, and when she 
worked in her flower-garden. Most of all then, 
for long ago he had been used to stop his 
horse and stand outside the low stone fence, 
with his arm through the bridle-rein, and talk 
with her in a playfully sentimental way that 
she had thought the prettiest sort of love-mak- 
ing. And so, to keep him out of her mind 
when she tended her spotted lilies and trained 
the purple wistaria, was as impossible as it 
would have been to avoid the connection be- 
tween the sky and the gracious heaven lying 
beyond. 

It was an innocent indulgence that did not 
infringe upon the rights of Vivian’s wife, and 


122 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


did no harm to the gentle woman herself ; for 
it kept alive her faith in human nature and 
trust in the compensations Providence has in 
store for those who have been denied their 
heart’s desire in this world. And these are 
feelings that die out in most of us under 
the scourge of disappointment and leave 
something worse than heartache in their 
room. 

There had been days when the loneliness of 
her self-chosen, single lot had been too hard to 
be borne, and sometimes then Miss Evy would 
steal to the window of her little spare front 
room, and peep guiltily through a slit in the 
blue shade to watch for a sight of Vivian rid- 
ing past, and when the longed-for vision ap- 
peared, she would start back with her hand on 
her heart and a hot color in her delicate cheek, 
but he never saw her, nor ever dreamed of her 
observation. If he had he would have dis- 
mounted and chatted with her for a few min- 
utes at the gate ; for Vivian was ever tender 
toward the women who worshiped him, and 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


123 

he would have valued the eloquent if silent 
appreciation of this faithful heart, and taken 
comfort in the sympathy she would have ex- 
pressed at least in looks ; rumor having carried 
to her news of scenes at Benvenew, little to 
Amanda’s credit. 

As she stood back behind the door, and 
watched from this little distance hands that 
had a better right than her own minister to 
the man she loved, a pang of jealousy sent its 
jarring quiver through all her nerves; but the 
next instant it was succeeded by the thankful 
feeling that it was hers to extend hospitality, 
to furnish the means of comfort, and mayhap, 
her privilege, while others rested, to help nurse 
him back to health. 

There was something for everyone to do 
that night, for the country doctor worked with 
the bustle that grows out of the necessity of 
finding occupation for the officious onlookers 
who must not be offended. Something for 
everybody excepting Jane Thomas, whose 
hysterical condition made her such a nuisance 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


124. 

that even Dr. Sowers could think of no more 
diplomatic suggestion than that she should go 
somewhere and lie down — and take some warm 
water and brandy. 

“ And me a Blue Ribboner ! ” she moaned 
resentfully. 

Amanda was a born nurse ; self-restrained, 
level-headed, tender and strong, she won golden 
laurels in the doctor’s opinion as she quietly 
took her place at his side, and intelligently 
carried out his wishes without comment or 
question. Her mother went home at nine 
o’clock to take care of little Nellie, the doctor 
having stated his opinion that although there 
was concussion of the brain, Vivian’s hurt 
would not necessarily prove fatal. The state 
of coma might be followed by brain fever, but 
with good nursing his fine constitution would 
bring him through. 

“ It’s sartenly a special Providence,” thought 
Mrs. Powell, when Amanda told her that she 
should stay at the cottage. “ Don’t you take a 
mite o’ fear ’bout Nellie; you know she’d stay 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO . 


I2 5 

with me contented fur any length o’ time,” she 
said, as she left. 

“ But you’ll bring her over to see me for a 
few minutes when you come to-morrow,” 
Amanda urged, and her mother answered : “Uv 
coas, honey, we’ll come over right ’arly. Don’t 
you get wore out now ; you and Miss Evy take 
tu’ns settin’ up.” 

It had required considerable effort to induce 
Mrs. Thomas to see things in the light of her 
uselessness, and it was the doctor himself who 
finally carried her off and left the house to Miss 
Evy and Amanda. It was late when they 
found themselves alone in the little room where 
lay the still form of the man who was dearer 
than her heart’s best blood to the one woman, 
and to the other — who shall say whether dear, 
or no ? 

Amanda had never been in love with the 
all-conquering hero of Fauquier County. At 
eighteen she had been in love with love ; and 
Vivian was nearer the embodiment of her ideal 
than any other whom she knew. The high- 


126 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


est powers of our nature remain latent in most 
of us for lack of opportunity to develop. It may 
be a talent, it may be a virtue that stays in the 
germ throughout all the ups and downs of our 
career, and that we pass on to our children to 
come out in them as practical capacity. 

Although Amanda had in her nature a rare 
power of wifely devotion, it was of the royal 
order ; it could not stoop, and so it died away. 
And in its stead had grown to mighty propor- 
tions the mother-love that extends in women 
of a high type beyond the instinctive care of 
her own young, to an all-embracing tenderness 
toward feeble creatures of every degree. The 
little ones, the helpless, the sick appealed to 
this strong, self-poised woman in a way that 
called out every capacity for self-sacrifice that 
lay in her, and she would have wrestled with 
death and all the evil powers to save from harm 
anything which confided itself to her protection. 

The vigorous, healthy Vivian, contemptu- 
ously setting at naught her standards of duty, 
and wounding her dignity in a hundred ways, 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


127 


was so repulsive to her moral sense that she was 
ready to fly from him as from a pestilence. 
But Vivian cast down from his height of grace- 
ful insolence and dependent upon her kind 
offices, had claims before which every critical 
faculty bowed itself. All she thought of now 
was how to help him. 

“ Do you think he’ll come to in his right 
mind ? ” asked Miss Evy in a low murmur, after 
half an hour had passed in silence. She could 
not stand it any longer. She felt as if she must 
say something. That handsome, calm woman 
seated at the head of the bed awed her, and at 
the same time irritated her. In some vague 
way she felt that Amanda was to blame for 
Vivian’s accident. Like Mrs. Thomas she felt 
that if the wife had fallen into spasms of self- 
reproach it would have been more fitting than 
this display of courage and energy. Yet she 
was glad, too, for his sake that there was some 
one at hand able to “ take holt and do what- 
ever wuz needed.” 

Amanda looked over at the gentle spinster 


128 


SOUTHERN HE A R TS. 


pleasantly, but replied only by a faint shake of 
the head. Her watch lay open upon the stand 
beside a glass of medicine, covered with a hymn 
book. Upon the book lay a thin silver spoon 
marked with the initials of Miss Evy’s grand- 
mother. It was one of six, and Miss Evy only 
used them upon # rare occasions. 

Amanda still wore her black silk, and over it 
she had tied one of her hostess’ white aprons, 
made of fine nainsook and trimmed with a deep 
border of home-made lace. Aprons are the 
least neutral of garments, for they have the 
effect of bringing into view certain values in 
their wearer. By this touchstone some women 
are instantly proclaimed dowdies ; others ap- 
proved as domestic, and still others marked out 
as queens or fairies masquerading. The natural 
servant wears her apron smartly ; the born 
chatelaine with an inimitable grace. Upon 
Amanda’s magnificent figure the garment as- 
sumed the air of the imperial purple, and Miss 
Evy, watching her meekly, acknowledged in 
her successful rival some rare quality which she 


T HE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


129 

could not name, but which seemed to account 
for and justify the ascendancy she was said to 
exercise over all her family. 

At midnight Vivian opened his eyes. 
“ Whoa, Sultan ! ” he uttered in feeble tones, 
and made a motion with his hand as if he 
pulled upon the reins. Miss Evy started, but 
Amanda laid her finger on her lips and bending 
over him, said softly : 

“ Drink this, Vivian,” putting a glass to his 
lips. He drank all she gave him eagerly, then 
his head fell back upon the pillow, and he slept 
till dawn. 

Miss Evy was persuaded to retire toward 
morning. She would have preferred to sit there 
and watch, but she could not say so, and she 
was compelled to steal away upstairs, and leave 
Vivian to his wife, who kept unwinking vigil 
until the first glimmer of light shot through the 
closed blinds of the east window. Then she 
arose and put out the lamp, and noiselessly rais- 
ing the window let the pure, fresh mountain air 
into the little room. During her watchful night 
9 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


130 

her mind had been entirely occupied with 
Vivian’s condition ; she had not thought of 
herself. But now, as the sun touched the tip 
of Round Peak and crept downward till the 
whole valley was illumined with the light of a 
perfect October day, she became conscious, with 
a thrill of pain, of that feeling of personal life 
and identity which is so strong and vivid when, 
in some beautiful spot isolated from the whirl 
of cities, we open our eyes upon a new day. 

There is no other joy so fine and none so 
fleeting, perhaps, as this stirring of our indi- 
vidual energies by the breath of that mighty 
living force that recreates us each morning after 
the apathy of night. At this instant of recog- 
nition the day belongs to us and the air resounds 
with a paean of wonderful hopes and promises, 
as if our single personality were the only con- 
cern of nature. Soon the responsibilities of our 
relations to others crowd out this sense of in- 
dividual life and the momentary Sabbath-peace 
of the soul is broken up by the work-a-day hum 
of jarring machinery. So, swift upon the ex- 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 13 1 

altation aroused in Amanda by the influence of 
an unshared sunrise, came the disappointing 
sense of check and defeat to her own purposes 
and plans, which had been wrought within the 
last few hours. None of the reasons that led to 
her decision to go away and begin a new life 
remote from these surroundings had altered. 
Fauquier County was still limited, narrow, and 
hostile to Nellie’s mental development ; Ben- 
venew was still poverty-stricken, and no new 
resources suggested themselves. And Vivian 
,was still the old Vivian, with all his vices upon 
his head, and likely with the first hour of re- 
turning health to repel and disgust her, just as 
he had been doing all along. Every condition 
she had dwelt upon as urgent cause of flight 
was unchanged ; and yet, with lightning swift- 
ness was accomplished that resolution, paral- 
leled in the experience of every one of us, by 
which the one whose offenses had banished him 
from her consideration, was made through sud- 
den appeal to pity, the object of first import- 
ance to her. 


132 


SOUTHERN HE A R TS. 


As Amanda turned from the window and 
approached the bed where Vivian was now 
opening eyes in which the light of reason was 
absent, she turned her back upon all the rosy 
hopes that had been dwelling in her imagi- 
nation, and took up the burden of a hard and 
painful duty. For she was aware through the 
prophetic insight that flashes through our acts 
into the region of remote consequences, that 
out of the immediate obligation of nursing her 
husband back to health and strength, would 
grow ties that would cramp and fetter all her 
future. Her only defense against whatever his 
will might impose upon her had been in her 
feeling of antagonism. For, strong and self- 
poised as she was, she had the woman’s weak- 
point of an intense susceptibility, and if she 
had achieved the wish to be hard as nails, the 
first touch from a beseeching hand would in- 
evitably break through the crust and betray 
the lurking softness beneath. 

It was with a quiver of fright that she re- 
alized, as she raised Vivian’s head upon her 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 


*33 

arm and felt him weakly recline against it, that 
the barriers would soon be broken down be- 
tween them, and that there might enter into 
her heart, destitute of respect and esteem that 
pitiful substitute for true affection, a self-im 
molating tenderness that leads judgment into 
abysses where poisonous plants grow, exhal- 
ing odors detrimental to sanity and health. 
The flash of fear came and went, and no one, 
save her mother, ever knew what Amanda’s 
concession meant to her, and what it involved. 

Miss Evy had passed a sleepless night, and 
at six o’clock she crept softly down to the door 
of Vivian’s bedroom and stood for a moment 
before she knocked, listening for sounds that 
she dreaded to hear, the sound of incoherent 
murmuring, in femininely sweet tones. 

“ Come in,” Amanda called, and she entered, 
with a scared, anxious face and timid step. 

“He’s out of his mind, ain’t he?” she 
queried pitifully, and Amanda made an as- 
senting movement of the head. 

Vivian’s delirium was not violent at first, 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


134 

and he submitted to requirements with a gentle- 
ness that was like his ordinary courtesy. But 
he recognized no one for many days, showing 
a preference, however, for Amanda and her 
mother, over all the others who came in to 
offer their services. His wife seemed to have 
a peculiarly soothing effect upon him, and 
with another variation from his attitude when 
in health, he was impatient and fretful when- 
ever his mother appeared. Mrs. Thomas 
took this hard, and in the parlor of the cottage, 
where she sat most of the time seeing callers, 
she bewailed the ingratitude of her son, and 
whispered dark sayings against Amanda — 
“ who wuz tryin’ now to throw dust in people’s 
eyes by makin’ out she was dreadful fond o’ 
him, when if the truth wuz told — ” 

It seemed as if everybody within ten miles 
around came with offers of help and utter- 
ances of sympathy ; the last delivered only to 
Mrs. Thomas and Miss Evy, for few persons 
saw Amanda. For ten days she watched by 
Vivian’s bedside with a devotion that com- 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


*35 

pletely revolutionized all Miss Evy’s ideas of 
her, and astonished even her mother. And 
when, from the very jaws of death, Vivian 
came slowly back to life, he had become to 
her like a dear child, whom it was her duty 
to shield and minister to, and treat with a 
tenderness unmingled with criticism. Whether 
this mental attitude would continue was a 
question. Mrs. Powell held counsel about it 
with herself, and made it a subject of prayer : 
“ That Mandy would go on bein' forgivin’ an’ 
lovin’ an’ that ail’d go well betwixt her an’ her 
husband.” 

The exquisite season of Indian Summer, 
the fifth season of the year in the mountain 
region of Virginia, set in early, and one morn- 
ing when the air was so soft that it brought 
to the surface all the gentle, kindly impulses 
of hearts that stiffen and congeal under the 
rough touch of frost, Amanda found herself 
curiously moved as she stepped lightly about 
Vivian’s room, waiting for him to awake. 

It often happens that a mental preparation 


1 36 SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 

unconsciously takes place in us for events 
about to happen. A letter is on its way to 
us, and we think of the writer, sometimes 
expressing a solicitude the letter’s contents 
justify. A friend visits us and we meet him 
witli the remark that we were at that moment 
longing for his presence. Some catastrophe 
takes place that we were anticipating, and if 
a pleasure is in the air its approach is heralded 
by a peculiar elation and excitement that our 
occupations cannot account for. 

These are more tangible things, and easier 
to understand than the subtle atmospheric 
changes that pass along from heart to heart. 
How can we explain the power affection has 
to send its prophet before to prepare for its 
coming? In some unexpected hour a certain 
something tugs at our heart-strings and tunes 
them up so that when the right hand is ex- 
tended a melody is evoked that we did not 
think of or intend. 

Amanda was a practical woman, not an emo- 
tional one, but she was not therefore any the 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


I 37 


less alive to fine shades of feeling. She dusted 
the bedroom with a piece of dampened cheese- 
cloth, set carefully upon the stand the slender 
necked Bohemian vase of flowers that were 
Miss Evy’s morning tribute, and laid out clean 
towels beside the basin of fresh water upon 
the chair by the bed, as methodically as usual. 
Yet she was conscious of being in a state of 
expectancy, as if she stood upon the eve of 
something. 

Vivian opened his eyes, larger and clearer 
for his three weeks’ illness, and looked in her 
face with that solemn expression that accom- 
panies the return of consciousness after the 
delirium of fever’ and she trembled under the 
rush of tenderness that his gaze awakened. 

“ Amanda ! ” he said feebly, “ you in here ! 
Aren’t you up early? ” 

“ Not so very early, dear,” she responded, 
very gently. “ It’s you who have slept 
late.” 

“ Strange I don’t feel more like getting up,” 
he remarked. Then his gaze wandered over 


1 38 so UTHERN HEA R TS. 

the room, and came back in perplexity to her 
face. 

“ Are you the genii ? ” he asked with a little 
smile. 

“ Am I what ? ” She thought his wits were 
wandering again. 

“ The genii. I must be Prince Camaralza- 
man. I went to sleep in my own room last 
night, and wake up in this, which I vow I 
never saw before.” 

“You were indeed brought here, but not 
from your own room. You have been here 
three weeks, Vivian. You fell from your horse 
into Mowbray Gulch and hurt your head, and 
you have had brain fever.’ 

She spoke slowly, and he followed her words 
attentively, closing his eyes when she was 
through, and lying perfectly quiet for a minute. 
Then he said : 

“ Where is ‘ here ? ’ ” 

“We are °t Miss Evy Smith’s. Her house 
was the nearest place, you know, and you had 
to be brought here.” 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 139 

l< Evy Smith’s ! ” he repeated, with a strange 
little laugh. “ That’s singular.” After an 
interval, he added : 

“ Has she been nursing me?” 

“ She helped. She has been very, very kind. 
A sister could not have done more.” 

“ She was always sweet and obliging,” he 
observed. “ But — Amanda, come sit down on 
the bed, won’t you ? My voice seems mighty 
weak, somehow.” 

“ I mustn’t let you talk,” Amanda said. She 
sat down on the edge of the bed, and as she 
did so a flush settled upon her firm cheek and 
stayed there. Not for three years had she 
been so close to him. Perhaps he remembered, 
too. What he said was : 

“ So it is you who have been taking care of 
me ? It was good of you, Amanda. I think 
you must have grown rather fond of me while 
I’ve been at your mercy here.” 

That unerring tact of his suggested exactly 
the right thing to say. Not a word to jar the 
delicate springs of feeling that had been set at 


140 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


work in her, and not a sign that he meant to 
take advantage of her changed attitude. 

He was too weak to think such matters out. 
He merely obeyed the keen instinct that be- 
longs to natures like his, in emphasizing by 
this casual allusion the leniency and indulgence 
she must naturally feel toward him under the 
circumstances. 

Some people have the faculty of making us 
feel grateful to them for permitting us to serve 
them. Vivian had it. Amanda was so de- 
lighted to see him recovering that she almost 
felt like thanking him for it. Perhaps one 
reason for this humility was that she had not 
been free throughout his illness from the sting 
of self-reproach. Outwardly she had ignored 
Jane Thomas’ bitter charge that her violent 
conduct had indirectly caused Vivian’s acci- 
dent. But in secret her conscience had taken 
her to task again and again for her severity 
toward him. If it had led to this she felt that 
blame should rightly fall upon her. 

No faculty of our nature brings to us keener 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO . 


141 

suffering than our sense of justice. Suppressed, 
it cries out continually ; exercised, it leads to 
acts too positive to be endured in retrospect ; 
and this relenting of a strong nature, this going 
back upon itself and its principles, is a com- 
mon occurrence in daily life. 

Great risk attends such changes of mental 
attitude, for character is built upon a belief 
in the correctness of our own judgment. If 
we ever come to a point where it appears prob- 
able that everything we have held to and be- 
lieved in is a mistake, God help us ! 

Now, the strong point in Amanda’s char- 
acter was her unflinching uprightness. She 
had always dared tell the truth to herself, 
using no palliations. And in this way she felt 
certain of her ground. But now, for the first 
time, the demon of self-distrust had entered 
into her mind, and all her ideas and opinions 
became affected by it. 

If she had been to blame in her attitude 
toward Vivian, how far was she to blame ? Ip 
what respect was she right? Poor Amanda 


142 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


was now in a condition where Jane Thomas* 
stinging remarks could cause her discomfort. 
Strangely enough, her greatest consolation 
was in the attachment Miss Evy had formed 
for her. 

“ I don’t know how I could ever have let 
myself think of you as I used to to think, Mrs. 
Thomas,” the gentle spinster had said once, 
when they were upon confidential terms. “ I’m 
shore you’re anything but unfeeling.” 

“ Am I called that ? ” Amanda asked, not 
without a pang. She was no longer above 
caring what people said about her. 

“ Well, you know some people must have 
something to say about everybody,” Miss Evy 
said, apologetically. “ But since I know you, 
why, I think you’re real good ; even good 
enough for Mr. Thomas.” 

Amanda looked at her when she said that. 
Something occurred to her that she had heard 
a long time ago and forgotten. 

“ Thank you,” she said, quite gently, and 
turned away. 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


143 

Miss Evy’s hospitality had not been worn 
out by the severe test made of it. As a con- 
valescent Vivian had been endearing to the 
last degree. It was congenial to him to be 
waited upon, and the one severe and immiti- 
gable suffering incidental to his illness (and 
for which he secretly promised himself royal 
amends) was almost made up for by the knowl- 
edge that he had at last discovered Amanda’s 
weak point, and could hereafter, at least in a 
measure, hold his own. Vivian did not put 
it just this way to himself. He had as great a 
genius for embroidering facts as Amanda had 
for truth. What he said was that he was glad 
to find that his wife was fond of him, after all. 
And in a beautiful spirit he forgave her, and 
took her to his heart. 

This is what Fauquier County understood. 
But it did not forgive Amanda. 

A year later the county might have forgiven 
her, if she had borne the misfortune that came 
to her more meekly. But revolutions of char- 
acter are seldom permanent, and Amanda, after 


144 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


compromising with her own judgment because 
it found her consistently severe, entered into 
that debatable territory where we are swayed 
alternately by a desire to be gentle and an im- 
pulse to be sharp. 

“ I don’t mean to reproach ye, honey,” her 
mother said, one day when Amanda was spend- 
ing the day with her ; “ but somehow, yo’ tem- 
per ain’t so even as it used to be. You wuz 
always high — wantin’ things yo’ own way. It 
ain’t so much that now. But you’s mo’ easy 
upset than you used to be.” 

Amanda turned her dark eyes upon her 
mother. They were beautiful still. But that 
crisis of a woman’s life when her beauty begins 
to fade had come to her early. 

Upon her lap lay a three months’ old baby. 
It had a look of vigor, and a certain weird 
beauty about its little face ; but not for an 
instant during her almost passionate care of 
it had Amanda been able to forget something 
that the flowing robes concealed from casual 
glances. The child was hopelessly deformed. 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


US 

“Yes, dearie, I know,” said Mrs. Powell, 
her gaze following Amanda’s as it was bent 
upon the sleeping infant. “ I know it’s a trial. 
And I’m ashamed I said anything. Nobody 
need t’ wonder at yo’ bein’ a mite out o’ gear. 
But trust the good Laud, Mandy, and He’ll 
bring everything out right, yit.” 

“Will He straighten baby’s back, do you 
think, mother? Or do you mean that He will 
make things right by letting it die?” 

Mrs. Powell’s color arose, and she did not 
venture to reply. Could any one but a mother 
wish the child to live ? 

“ He will not die,” said Amanda, laying her 
hand softly on the baby’s thick golden hair. 
There was intense feeling in the low tone, but 
with her next words her voice took on a hard 
quality that Mrs. Powell had learned to asso- 
ciate with acute distress. “ He will live,” she 
cried, but not loudly ; “ live to reproach his 
father for a sin so dark that no one can name 
it. Aye, we must hush it up. This is a ‘visi- 
tation of Providence,’ in the opinion of our 
IQ 


146 


SOUTHERN HEARTS . 


good friends. Well, I don’t call it that. The 
truth is that it’s a visitation of liquor , of ” 

“ Hush, hush, Mandy ! ” 

“ Excuse my lack of delicacy,” said Amanda, 
with biting scorn. Not scorn of her mother, 
but of the idea of the county as reflected in 
her mother. She leaned back and drew a 
fleecy white shawl carefully over the baby’s 
shoulders, then resumed sadly : 

“ I could stand it better, if I was free from 
blame in my own eyes. I tell you, mother, 
the only real hell is in knowing you’re wrong, 
and feeling, to the bottom of your heart that 
you’ve brought suffering upon others by being 
wrong.” 

“ My dear child,” quavered good Mrs. Powell, 
“ you’s morbid. Yo’ notion ain’t the right 
notion at all. How could you ahelped the 
pore child’s bein’ so ? ” 

“ By standing to my colors. By obeying 
my own conscience, no matter what the world 
said.” 

“ Mandy, yo’ own sense must tell you’t you 


THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO. 


147 


couldn’t ahelped it, noway. Even if you’d 
kept on thinkin’ ’s you done. It wuz took 
out’n yo’ hands. You done yo’ duty in stayin’ 
by Vivian when he wuz laid low, an’ nobody 
kin do mo’n their duty.” 

“ It was my duty to nurse him. And after 
that — after he was well , I should have — gone.” 

“ Now, I reely thought you got fond o’ Viv- 
ian, an’ I wuz thankin’ the Laud for it.” 

“ Oh, women are mostly fools,” answered 
Amanda, sweepingly. “ But don ! t thank the 
Lord for it, mother. The fruits of folly are 
more bitter than the fruits of wilful sins, I 
think.” 

“ Mandy,” said Mrs. Powell, rising in all the 
might of her sensible, hearty, well-balanced 
nature ; “ it won’t do to be furever dwellin’ 
’pon what we’ve failed to do, an’ what we ought 
to adone. This world ain’t heaven, and we’s 
right to rejoice with tremblin’ ; but there’s a 
sayin’ I want to recommend to yo’ pore, worn 
heart : ‘ Again I say unto ye, rejoice.’ That’s 
It, honey. Stop worryin’ an’ freftin’ an’ leave 


148 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


things you can’t alter if you wuz to kill yo’self 
try in’. 

“An’ now I’m agoin’ to hev Liza make a 
co’n pudden’ an’ whip up cream fur the peaches, 
an’ you must please me by puttin’ away every- 
thing else an’ givin’ yo’ mind to enjoyin’ a 
right good dinner. Thar’s miseries in the 
world, to be shore, but thar’s comfort too, an’ 
to my thinkin’ it’s mighty good common sense 
to take our fill o’ creature comforts as we go 
along, fur we’s only got a certain length o’ 
time to stay ’pon this ’arth, an’ we might as 
well make the best on it.” 

“ There are some things that have no best 
side,” said Amanda ; but she said it rather 
faintly. After all, there was logic in what her 
mother expressed. She knew that nothing in 
the world now could alter her opinion of Viv- 
ian ; nothing should ever again alter her 
attitude toward him. But was there any 
comfort or happiness to be got out of life 
still ? 

Mrs. Powell had left the room, after pressing 


THE IVIEE OF LOTHARIO. 


49 


a kiss upon her daughter’s cheek, and another 
upon the hair of the sleeping baby. 

Through the window came the sound of 
Nellie’s voice, exclaiming to her little colored 
playmates in vivacious accents : “ There’s papa 
coming ! Grandma said he was coming to 
dinner; ” and in another moment she skipped 
into the room with her hand in that of the 
fine-looking man who appeared before his wife 
hat in hand, wearing a gentle, deprecating smile. 

Amanda arose quickly, pressing her baby to 
her breast, and stood looking at him with fire 
in her eyes. Am I never to be safe from your 
intrusion? her look said. But her lips were 
mute, and with a lately learned self-control she 
remained silent, while he filled in the embarrass- 
ing moment with the graceful, fluent phrases 
ever at his command. 

“ What a magnificent woman she is,” thought 
Vivian, as he threw himself into a chair, and 
began to entertain little Nellie with some funny 
anecdote, intensely conscious all the while of 
the stately, stern presence that ignored him. 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


I 5° 

Suddenly her gown brushed his knees as she 
passed him on her way to the door, and he 
glanced up rather uneasily. 

“ I’m only going to lay baby on the bed/' 
she said in a low tone, not without the trace 
of contempt she could never nowadays keep 
out of her voice when speaking to him. But 
in the other room, while she was bending over 
her little one, there came to her one of those 
humorous suggestions that visit us now and 
then, to lighten our periods of depression. 

“ Man is, after all, only a kind of stomach, 
and friendship but an eating together/’ The 
sentence was from Carlyle, perhaps ; anyway, 
it was applicable to the situation. What was 
the use of making such a serious affair out of 
living ? 

“ Oh, yes, it is easy enough to be upon 
friendly terms ‘ if friendship is but an eating 
together,’ ” Amanda said to herself, grimly. 

Half an hour later Mrs. Powell, sitting, 
flushed and anxious at the head of her hos- 
pitable table, rejoiced at the amenities that 


THE WIFE OF LO THA RIO . 1 5 x 

passed between her two guests, and whispered 
to her own heart that everything was coming 
out right, in the end. And to this determined 
optimism Amanda, who interpreted her moth- 
er’s beaming looks perfectly, made no sign of 
dissent. But Vivian, even with his facile ac- 
ceptance of all things in his favor, could not 
help but realize to-day, very strongly, that 
Amanda would never be to him, so long as she 
lived, anything but an icicle. With her temper, 
it might have been worse than that. 



















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PETER WEAVER 


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PETER WEAVER . 1 


I. 

Sneaking Creek Church had an unusu- 
ally full attendance on the Sunday morning 
that saw Miles Armstrong’s first wrestle with 
his Satanic majesty, in the interests of that 
congregation. 

He was a well-grown boy of twenty, or so, 
with the look of an eager colt scenting its first 
honors in the wind, and determined to strain 
every nerve to come in ahead at the finish. The 
bright, brown eye, large and deep, turning here 
and there with a half-timid, half-bold gaze, 
the quivering nostril and tossing chestnut 
mane over his long head gave him a likeness 
to a high-bred horse, scarcely broken yet, and 
destined to kick the traces somewhat before 
settling down to a steady pace. 

1 Copyright, 1900, by the F. M. Lupton Publishing Co. 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


* 5 6 

The accommodations offered by the Second 
Baptist Church to its preachers were not luxu- 
rious. A straight-backed cane chair, and a 
small square table holding a bible and a pitcher 
of water were the creature comforts that stole 
gently upon the senses of young Armstrong 
after his ten-mile gallop over Fauquier County 
roads that morning. 

Nothing cared he for creature comforts. 
Nothing either, for the fact that the congre- 
gation facing him was composed of Fauquier 
County’s choicest and best in the line of heredi- 
tary sinners ; clothed in fine raiment and con- 
scious of waiting carriages and servants outside, 
and of choice viands upon solid silver dishes at 
the end of their journey homeward after they 
had listened to the sermon. To him all these 
personages, in rustling silks and fine broadcloth, 
all these Haywoods, and Gordons, and Dudleys 
were so many sick souls, needing the cordial 
of the true gospel ; so many criminally blind 
beings with feet turned toward destruction, 
careless of the light and life they might have 


PETER WEAVER . 157 

by an effort that, to him, in his young zeal, 
seemed so simple and slight ; to them, per- 
haps, involving sacrifices beyond his experience 
and power to imagine. 

Immediately in front of the platform stood 
the organ, and seated bolt upright before this 
was Miss Lavinia Powell, in a green silk waist 
with skin-tight sleeves that prevented her rais- 
ing her arms to her head to twist up the -wisp 
of gray hair straggling from her door-knob 
coiffeur , and which consequently held the un- 
easy attention of a nervous woman in her rear 
all church time. Had the hair belonged to 
anybody else than Miss Lavinia Powell, the 
neighbor would have ventured to reach over 
and adjust it. But no one ever performed famil- 
iar offices for Miss Powell. She was the quin- 
tessence of spinsterhood, and her weapons of 
defense were two gray eyes like a ferret’s ; of 
offense — a tongue unparalleled for point. 

Two-thirds of the people were wondering 
what Miss Lavinia thought of the new preacher. 
He was not yet permanently engaged. Under- 


158 SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 

neath all his concentrated purpose to utter 
telling truths this morning, lurked the conscious- 
ness that he was on probation. He felt, even 
though it was impossible that he could have 
heard the whisper that was running around the 
church while he gave out the first hymn. It 
began in the pew occupied by a couple of girls 
who were visiting old Mrs. Powell, who sat with 
her sweet, serene face turned toward the young 
preacher with a look of beautifully blended 
respect and benevolence. She heard none of 
the gossip carried on by her nieces. 

“ Is he ordained ?” 

“ No, indeed. Not a minister at all yet.” 

“ He’s experienced sanctification, though.” 

‘‘You don’t say so ! ” 

“ Yes, but he fell from grace, they say. Per- 
haps that’s why he looks so melancholy.” 

“ Do you think he looks melancholy ? To 
me he just looks earnest. He’s got splendid 
eyes, but they’re awfully deep. I’d be proud 
of a man with eyes like that, wouldn’t 
you ? ” 


PETER WEAVER. 


1 59 

A smothered giggle, and a murmur to a 
friend in the next pew. 

“ Do you believe in sanctification ? The 
preacher’s experienced it.” 

Nellie Thomas heard the last remark, and 
from that moment her reverential gaze was 
fixed upon the thin, earnest face of the youth- 
ful preacher. Her heart bowed before the 
spiritual power abiding in him. She received 
the sermon as a divine message, humbly re- 
sponsive to the persuasive words that sought 
to arouse a conviction of sin in all hearers. 

“ We are all of us in the mire of sin,” ut- 
tered the clear young voice in solemn accents. 
“ Every one of us should take shame to him- 
self for his sins. You that wear elegant clothes 
and live in great houses are no better than the 
beggar — the tramp — that goes from one back 
door to another — in the matter of sin. The 
back door of the Father’s house is the door 
we’ll have to go to when we want to enter into 
heaven. If you are proud and lofty-minded, 
and think yourself good enough to be admitted 


1 60 SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 

at the front door it is all the more certain that 
you’ll be turned away and made to go around 
to the back entrance, and made to wait there 
knocking a long time before you are let in. 
And good enough for you, too. Are any one 
of us fit to enter into the presence of the Lord ? 
If any one of us thinks so he ought to take 
shame to himself for the notion. If I had such 
a false notion in my own head I’d take shame 
to myself for it.” 

The sermon went on, the emphatic voice fall- 
ing at the end of every sentence as if the speaker 
had the intent to drive home his argument by 
verbal knocks. The respectable audience was 
browbeaten and held up to ridicule for its pre- 
tensions to virtue ; it was proved conclusively 
that not a hope of salvation could be reason- 
ably cherished by a single person present. 
Proved to the general mind. A few persons 
remained in doubt, and one — a man seated with 
folded arms in the middle of the church — con- 
tinued utterly skeptical. He had attended 
closely to the sermon, his broad, ruddy face 


PETER WEAVER. 

expressing throughout a kindly sympathy with 
the preacher, curiously mingled with concern. 
Now and then he had allowed a great sigh to 
escape him. and once he moved restlessly as if 
impelled to utter a protest. But he mastered 
the impulse and kept quiet until the final word 
was said, and the preacher in an agitated voice 
gave out the last hymn. All the hymns had 
been mournful. This was brighter. Perhaps 
the congregation embraced the opportunity for 
a change of mood, for the hymn swelled out 
with unwonted vigor, nearly every one falling 
in with the second stanza. 

A powerful bass voice projected itself from 
the lungs of the good-humored-looking skeptic. 
Throwing back his head he roared forth a 
melodious bellow that drowned all other indi- 
vidual accents — save one. Nellie Thomas’ 
bird-like tones thrilled their roundelay of wor- 
ship with the silvery clearness of the skylark. 
With the freshness and innocence of some lark 
reared on the top bough of a giant tree, high 

above the strife and guilt of the world. The 

n 


162 


SOUTHERN HE A R TS. 


throb of feeling in the tones came from the 
same source that a child’s emotions of worship 
come from ; an awed sense of personal in- 
feriority to some element of perfection dwell- 
ing somewhere in the universe, and approached 
on timid wings of faith. Unconscious of self, 
her sweet voice brightened and strengthened 
until the mass of sound outside seemed but a 
great accompaniment, the mighty single bass 
bearing her up as if it held her aloft in its arms. 

This was what Peter Weaver came to church 
for. Singing devotional songs with little Nellie 
was the crown and cap-sheaf of the week’s 
silent, unrecognized worship that was carried 
on with the generous abandonment of a mind 
seeking no reward beyond the ’ privilege of 
devoting itself to its cherished object. The 
simple, brave soul lodged in Peter’s huge frame 
joyed in surrounding the young girl with a pro- 
tecting fondness that was like an invisible shield 
interposed between her and harm. He had 
never cared for any other girl, and he had cared 
for her ever since she— a radiant maid of six 


PETER WEAVER . 163 

years in a pink lawn frock and white sunbonnet 
— entered the old school-house door one morn- 
ing twelve years before, and transformed the 
loutish boy puzzling over sums, into a poet and 
a knight-errant, bound forever to her service. 
During all these years that he had carried her 
school-books, gathered wild-flowers for her from 
dangerous mountain crevasses, and catered to 
her gentle whims in every way a man might, 
who bore her continually in his heart and 
studied how best to give her pleasure, Peter 
had never broken in upon this friendship by a 
word of the sentiment of which his poet-soul 
was full. Nellie, called by her admirers the 
beauty of Virginia, was to him the living em- 
bodiment of the sweet-briar rose, too delicate, 
too sensitive to be plucked and worn, even by 
one worthy of that distinction. Himself, he 
thought scarce worthy to tie her little shoe. 

And yet, except in contrast with this Dresden 
china creature, with her skin of milk and roses, 
her golden brown eyes so soft and shy, and her 
cloud of sunny curls, fine as floss, the modest 


1 64 SOUTHERN HEARTS. 

farmer-poet, tied by circumstances to homely 
tasks, was not a man to be despised. His 
height, which was six feet two inches, was sus- 
tained by good breadth of shoulder and shape- 
liness of limb. His round head, covered with 
short, crisp, black locks, was well set, and his 
pleasant eyes, of an opaque blue like the hue 
of old Dutch pottery, looked out at you with a 
frank and honest expression. There was too 
much color in his cheek, but it was a clear, 
bright red, showing healthy blood beneath, as 
free from venom as his nature. He was now 
thirty-two years old, and his philosophical 
temperament, not wanting in capacity for deep 
thinking, made his years set lightly upon him. 
He was still rather a great boy than a mature 
man, in the opinion of most people, and per- 
haps of all the men and women in Fauquier 
County who knew and liked Peter Weaver, but 
one person recognized and appreciated the 
sound, sane mind, the capacity for heroic ac- 
tion that lay beneath his eccentricities and 
commonplace, almost awkward bearing. This 


PETER WEAVER. 165 

friend was Amanda Thomas, the widowed mis- 
tress of Benvenew, called Mistress Amanda, to 
distinguish her from old widow Thomas, her 
mother-in-law. 

Mistress Amanda’s strong character rather 
than any external advantages had made her an 
important personage in the county. Her kins- 
folk, the Powells, were impoverished, and her 
husband, the bright particular star of the sport- 
ing set, had left her an affectionate legacy of 
debts, together with an invalid child whose 
malady set him apart from the working world 
and enshrined him in his mother’s heart as 
something to be tenderly cherished at any cost 
to herself or others. This boy. was never seen 
out of his home, and people whispered dark 
stories of his strange and dangerous moods, 
in which no one could do anything with him 
save Peter Weaver. 

No wonder, then, that Peter Weaver, whose 
oddities were not upheld by an ancient Virginia 
family name, was, nevertheless, welcomed as a 
favorite guest at Benvenew, where many a proud 


1 66 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


youngster hung about, thinking himself re- 
warded for hours of patient homage to the 
stately mistress, by a glimpse of shy Nellie. He 
and Mistress Amanda had come to that com- 
plete understanding when a glance interchanged 
means a whole volume of explanation. It was 
natural for this glance to be interchanged when 
they differed from prevailing opinions. 

Therefore, it was this great lady’s gaze that 
caught and held the doubtful look that Peter 
threw toward the preacher while the final ar- 
gument was being made as to the absolute 
necessity for all of them to be bowed down in 
humiliation over their sins. Some rapid ques- 
tion and answer seemed to pass between the 
two that left Peter satisfied. He threw him- 
self into the singing with more than common 
zeal, and when the moment came for a general 
relaxing from the stiffness of sermon-tide he 
walked out of his pew and up toward the front 
with a fixed purpose plainly written upon his 
face. 

The youthful preacher had stepped down 


PETER WEAVER. 


1 67 

from the platform, and with the step he seemed 
to become another man. All the severity had 
vanished both from countenance and manner. 
Bright, kind, with a suppressed liveliness that 
became in the passage from heart to tongue 
cheerful and witty response to the pleasant 
clamor around him, he was like a man who had 
thrown off the weight of a heavy responsibility, 
and got back home again. But outward trans- 
formations are not to be taken as signs of deep 
internal changes. The man wno laughs at your 
dinner table is the same man who refused to 
abate his stern judgment against your brother 
yesterday. He is not to be played with be- 
cause he chooses to be humorous. 

Peter Weaver was now standing beside the 
preacher. Mistress Amanda introduced them, 
and then turned so that her voluminous 
draperies made a barrier between the two men 
and the groups behind. 

Young Armstrong’s slim hand yielded a ready 
clasp to the mighty grip of the farmer-poet, 
who was anxious to express in this greeting 


SO U THERN HE A R TS. 


1 68 

more than usual good-will and interest. To 
balance what he had made up his mind it was 
his duty to say. 

“ I’m shore them that have a better right than 
me to express an opinion have thanked you 
for your sermon,” said Peter. Always slow, his 
speech was now even ponderous, through anx- 
iety to find appropriate words. Some of his 
thickness of his Dutch grandfather’s tongue 
had descended to him, along with a short- 
sighted and earnest devotion to duty. 

Armstrong answered by some light word, 
divining, by that super-sensitiveness of the 
young enthusiast, that a criticism was in the air. 
He looked up at the honest red face half a head 
higher than his own pale one, with a little curi- 
osity. Peter’s kindliness was so vast that he felt 
like a school-boy being forgiven by the professor 
of moral philosophy. A strange feeling for an 
expounder of the sacred word to experience 
in the presence of an apparently commonplace 
man. 

“It was a good sermon,” Peter went on; 


PETER WEAVER. 169 

“that is, good because there was an honest 
purpose in it. But I don’t agree with you, sir.” 

“ Don’t you ? ” retorted the preacher, smil- 
ing. He was not displeased that his first ser- 
mon contained stuff for argument. 

“You see, your point of view is the point of 
view of a well-meaning but inexperienced young 
man. The world isn’t near as bad as you made 
it out. There’s a lot of good in human nature', 
and you’ll find it out after awhile. I’m not 
afraid but what you’ll find it out. But I’d be 
sorry to have you go on saying all these hard 
things that don’t do any good. The only way to 
make people better is to take hold of some good 
thing about ’em and build on it. The world 
wants to be encouraged, not discouraged, sir ! ” 
Armstrong felt now like a boy in the infant 
class being lectured by the Sabbath-school 
superintendent. His white teeth closed down 
over his lower lip. It galled him to have to 
look up to meet the eyes of this singular in- 
dividual. But he rallied himself gallantly. 

“ Oh, I think very well of human nature,” 


SOUTHERN HE A R TS. 


170 

he said, in his strong, clear tones. “ But you 
know we must not look at things from that 
standpoint. Anything short of perfection is 
rottenness in the eyes of God. And who 
among us is anywhere near perfect ?” 

“ Still, the world wants encouraging,” re- 
peated Peter. 

It was the idea he had intended to emphasize. 
He wished that this fine young man and himself 
were seated on the porch of his little green cot- 
tage, with a pipe apiece, and the afternoon be- 
fore them to talk the matter out. But nearly 
everybody had left the church. Only half a 
dozen or so lingered to exchange a word with 
the preacher. Courteous Peter felt that he had 
been to the fore long enough. He extended 
his hand again, and gave Armstrong’s a cordial 
grip. 

“Your face contradicts your preaching,” he 
concluded, backing away reluctantly. “You’ll 
not be so severe when you let yourself be as 
much in sympathy with people as nature meant 
you to be ! ” 


PETER WEAVER. 


171 

He bowed in his ungainly fashion, and 
walked on out. Armstrong’s attention was 
immediately engaged by Mistress Amanda, 
who invited him to go home with her to din- 
ner. She had listened with keen interest to the 
little exchange of views between the preacher 
and Peter. Her sympathy was with Peter. 
She had less toleration than he for the intoler- 
ance of others. There is no bigotry like the 
bigotry of an egoistic mind that thinks itself 
liberal; and Mistress Amanda felt an impatient 
contempt for the hard and fast Calvinism of 
the preacher. But personal preferences were 
not allowed to stand in the way of hospitality. 
The preacher was pressed to come to Benvenew 
and stay over until Monday, when he could 
ride back to Roselawn, the Armstrong dwell- 
ing, in the cool air of the morning. 

Other persons had felt a sense of their hos- 
pitable duties. In fact, Armstrong was half 
engaged to go to the Gordons. He was turn- 
ing his gracefully uttered thanks into a refusal, 
when Mistress Amanda moved toward the pew 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


172 

on her left to pick up her fan, and in so doing 
gave him a glimpse of Nellie, who had kept 
modestly behind her mother all this time. 
Mistress Amanda was tall; Nellie was short 
and slim ; a sylph, a dainty fairy figure, over 
whose face played the luminous light of the 
moon as it is reflected in water. Her great 
soft eyes dwelt upon him with pathetic sym- 
pathy. The brightness of partizanship was 
there, too. A dove whose heart had been 
moved to side with an eagle engaged in combat 
with its fellow would probably have looked so. 
Nellie felt in her gentle bosom the stirring of 
vindictiveness against Peter’s rough hands that 
had essayed to tear away the veil of sanctity 
which hung over the Lord’s chosen vessel. 
Her ears still held the echo of those strong, 
stern words with which the preacher had re- 
buked sin. She mentally bowed before them. 
She, too, was a sinner. Oh, that he might lead 
her into the light ! 

Armstrong’s eyes had found her while these 
thoughts were writing themselves upon her in- 


PETER WEAVER. 


*73 


nocent face. In a second he caught a breath 
of that incense which filled the heart of the 
sweetbriar rose. Youth, enthusiasm, worship- 
ful instinct met and united in the one swift 
glance. The words of excuse died away in 
Armstrong’s throat. 

“ Let me present you to my daughter, 
Nellie,” said Mistress Amanda carelessly; hear- 
ing only a murmured acceptance of her in- 
vitation. The young girl bent her head, 
the rose tint deepening in her cheeks. The 
preacher bowed as to a queen. His manner 
seemed a trifle exaggerated to Mistress 
Amanda, but her critical reading of his charac- 
ter was that he would probably over-do every- 
thing. 

She moved toward the church door with 
him, her negligent glance taking in an impres- 
sion of a rather good-looking, gentlemanly 
bigot. Such people were bores that good 
breeding obliged one to suffer patiently. 

The church was perfectly quiet by the time 
they had reached the door, for they were the 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


174 

last. The crowd outside compelled them to 
stop for an instant in the vestibule. 

Suddenly there came to the ears of all three 
the sound of a long, mournful howl, deeper 
than that any dog could make ; heavy yet 
tremulous, as of something in great distress. 

Peter had been stayed at the door — probably 
he had loitered to see Nellie — and he, too, 
heard the sound. His round eyes widened and 
his mouth opened in astonishment. , Without 
dying away completely the painful bellow was 
renewed. 

It seemed to come from the interior of the 
church. 


II. 

Some remarkable epithet rolled from the 
throat of Peter as he turned his head from side 
to side in a perplexed grasping after the loca- 
tion of this disturbance. 

“It seems to come from the basement/' 
observed Mistress Amanda. Peter strode to 
the basement door and took hold of the knob. 


PETER WEAVER. 


*75 

It was locked ; an occurrence so unusual as to 
arouse renewed surprise. 

There was now a renewal of the sounds ; 
a succession of low, long-drawn-out bellows, be- 
coming more and more faint, and dying away 
completely while the four listeners stood look- 
ing at each other. 

“ May not some stray cow have got into the 
basement or cellar?” Armstrong suggested. 
It seemed to him that this big farmer showed 
more annoyance than the occasion demanded. 
Doubtless the explanation would prove to be 
very simple. But he had not Peter’s premises 
to argue from. Mistress Amanda and he both 
knew that if any animal was imprisoned be- 
neath the church it must have been driven there, 
and shut in. Why should such a thing be 
done? There was but one explanation. Over 
a week ago a fine cow belonging to Peter had 
bodily disappeared, without leaving a trace to 
identify the thief. He had had a strong sus- 
picion that the guilt lay at the door of his 
neighbor, Theodore Funkhausen, one of the 


176 SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 

richest men in the county, but commonly 
called “ Skunk.” Many a quarrel had taken 
place between “ Skunk ” and Peter Weaver, in 
which the generous nature had been the vic- 
tim. The last one dated a fortnight back, and 
was about Peter’s cattle. Soon afterward the 
cow had disappeared. Funkhausen’s sour vis- 
age had worn a particularly malicious look 
lately, when he and Peter met, a look that one 
who knew him might interpret as pleasure in 
an accomplished act of vengeance. 

“ I’m going to get at the meaning of them 
noises,” said Peter, with mighty emphasis, and 
he laid violent hands upon the door lock, which 
was weak and yielded without much resistance. 
“ If it’s as I think,” he added calmly, “ Thed 
Funkhausen’s going to have one thrashing!” 
He descended the dark stairway, and they heard 
the crackle of matches as he went. Peter’s pipe 
was not in his pocket when he attended church 
but his match-box was. 

“ What does he mean?” asked Armstrong 
of Mistress Amanda. The boyish liking for an 


PETER WEAVER . 


177 

adventure and the instinct of the southerner 
for a fight struggled in his breast with the 
severity of the preacher. He had a vague idea 
that Peter Weaver was one of the unregenerate 
persons toward whom one’s sympathies must 
not be allowed to flow incautiously. On the 
other hand, Funkhausen’s reputation had 
reached Roselawn. To the fact that he was a 
carpet-bagger the true-blooded Virginian laid 
some contemptible acts which otherwise would 
have been unaccountable. But there were per- 
sons who found the rich man good enough in 
his way, and he had a certain following, was a 
school trustee, member of the county jockey- 
.club, and sure of a seat among the judges at 
the annual fair. Consequently, when he took 
it into his head to quarrel the possibility of 
his antagonist being in the wrong naturally 
presented itself to fair minds. 

Armstrong had never heard of Peter Weaver, 
although the farmer-poet was well known 
throughout the county, and now that he had 

made his acquaintance he was not greatly dis- 
12 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


178 

posed to admire him. There was enough re- 
sentment in his mind for the elder man’s plain 
speaking to make neutrality in a quarrel be- 
tween him and Funkhausen appear a Christian 
duty. But he could not find fault with any cir- 
cumstances that led to his standing in the little 
vestibule close to this wonderfully fair young 
girl, whose spiritual face wore the far-away look 
of one whose thoughts are set on things above 
this earth. Yet Nellie had her practical side. 
In some things she was more practical than her 
mother. 

Mistress Amanda’s commanding bearing, 
however, was a complete contrast to the young 
girl’s modest, timid mien. Her fine, black eyes 
rested coldly upon the young man who had put 
his question to her in a judicial tone. She 
murmured a few words that were no reply, and 
busied herself in drawing up the folds of her 
black satin skirt to sweep out to her carriage. 
Peter was heard coming up the steps. He 
emerged with an apoplectic face, breathing 
hard. 


PETER WEAVER. 


1 79 


“ Was it ? ” asked Mistress Amanda. 

He nodded. “ Shorely, starved to death — 
the darned skunk ! ” 

His friend gave him a look expressive of the 
wisdom of keeping cool and waiting for the 
right occasion. It was something like throwing 
water on a red-hot stove. But Peter had un- 
limited confidence in the good sense of Mistress 
Amanda. And he bore in mind that it is a 
man’s duty not to show fight in the presence 
of ladies. So, sighing inwardly, he helped them 
up the step of the great family coach, where 
old Mrs. Powell and her niece were seated, 
waiting ; and, mounting his horse, rode off at a 
pace that harmonized with his feelings. 

Peter’s bulk was unhandsome on horseback. 
As young Armstrong lightly vaulted into his 
saddle and reined his horse beside the window, 
where Nellie’s sweet face peeped out from be- 
neath the shadow of a flower-laden leghorn hat, 
she silently noted the contrast between the 
riders. 

“What kep’ you so, Mandy?” asked old 


180 SOUTHERN HEARTS 

Mrs. Powell, with as near the suspicion of a 
complaint in her voice as ever got into it. 

“ Why, something very singular, mother. 
Would you credit it, that Funkhausen put 
Peter Weaver’s cow under the church and 
starved it to death ! We heard its moans — 
probably its last ones, and Peter went down 
and found it. He says he’ll thrash Funkhau- 
sen, and I think everybody in the county’ll 
stand by him if he does.” 

“ How perfectly dreadful ! ” chimed in the 
girls, in thrilled accents. 

“Oh, dear, Mandy, that wuz mean indeed of 
Funkhausen,” said the grieved old lady. “ And 
he a member o’ the chu’ch, and holdin’ to par- 
ticular redemption, which he oughtn’t to dare 
to do less he’s shore he’s one o’ the elect hisself.” 

“ He’ll need all his particular redemption — 
when Peter gets hold of him,” commented 
Mistress Amanda, who was no Antinomian. 
She took some pleasure in making remarks like 
these, less to shock her mother, to whom she 
was more tenderly deferential than to any- 


PETER WEAVER . 


18 


body else in the world, than to enlarge the 
outlook of Nellie, whose innate bent toward 
Calvinism irritated her. She disbelieved in the 
possibility of a woman saint under sixty. Of 
men, she had been heard to remark that they 
“ only got to heaven through the grace of God 
and the goodness of women.” But while she 
hated pretensions to special piety she readily 
pardoned sinners who were confessedly incor- 
rigible. She would overlook all offenses save 
self-complacency or the possession of a blood- 
less nature incapable alike of sterling virtues or 
robust wickedness. There are persons to whom 
the touch of velvet is odious. Mistress Amanda 
detested velvety natures. Some Viking-like 
quality in the woman, something fierce and 
grand as the breaking of a storm at sea, threw 
out a challenge for rough honesty; for the 
strong hand of untamed manhood to touch and 
calm her mood. In Peter Weaver she realized 
her ideal of robust, simple manliness. Twenty 
years before her maiden fancies would have 
passed him by with disdain. But there comes 


182 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


a period of life when a second set of desires 
replace the dreams of youth, unlike them in 
every respect, especially where “ the curse of a 
granted prayer ” has robbed the dreamer of il- 
lusions. In so many words, Mistress Amanda 
had never said to herself since she had been 
left a widow five years ago, — I like best the 
man who least resembles my husband : — but 
her regard involuntarily fell upon everything 
in the shape of both men and women, who 
were innocent of the suavity, the grace, and 
the polished egotism of the late Col. Thomas. 

To revise one’s personal ideals is sometimes 
commendable ; but a good mother usually reads 
her new philosophy into the life of her daugh- 
ter. In Mistress Amanda’s hands Nellie had 
been as ductile as gold foil, showing a fragility, 
however, that exacted delicate treatment. Here 
was a sweet, affectionate, domestic disposition, 
without any of the deep and subtle qualities 
that had rendered her own life stormy ; a 
nature formed to lean on strength and create a 
happy home for a good man. And Mistress 


PETER WEAVER 


i8 3 

Amanda had given to Peter’s shy wooing an 
unspoken but emphatic approval. But the 
sleeping beauty’s repose was not yet broken. 
Nellie’s maidenly meditations had still leave to 
wander where they listed. But one little cloud 
hung over the rosy sky of Mistress Amanda’s 
hopes : Nellie, always given to shy musings and 
conscientious scruples — had lately shown a 
strong bias toward her grandmother’s religious 
convictions. Indeed, it often seemed to Mis- 
tress Amanda, whose ambition and passion- 
ately maternal nature would have fitted her to 
be the mother of heroes, that her daughter be- 
longed more to old lady Powell than to herself. 

A dear, sweet old lady, with a heart full to 
overflowing with the milk of human kindness, 
and yet she had unconsciously become a moral 
stumbling-block to the one person whose hap- 
piness she was in every way most desirous of 
serving. 

Poor Mistress Amanda had never found any 
aid from nature in carrying out her plans, but 
she was not the woman to relinquish one on 


1 84 so UTHERN HEA R TS. 

that account. She relied upon the aid of 
chance to bring that proof to Nellie of Peter 
Weaver’s worth, which would make her tolerant 
of his rationalism. 

A poet and a skeptic ! Only in the degree 
which made it necessary for the solitary man, 
thinking out all things for himself, and philos- 
ophizing upon life with the sky and woods for 
counselors, to reach conclusions that he could 
connect with the way things had of turning 
out. Calvinism did not seem to him to con- 
nect with the law of duty to your neighbor as 
it presented itself to his conception ; and his 
theology took this simple formula : bear and 
forbear as long as you can, and then strike good 
blows ; leaving alone the consequences. 

And Nellie was a very mimosa for sensitive- 
ness, as to the sin of differing from one’s spir- 
itual advisers. Mistress Amanda looked at her 
daughter, a translucent opal set between those 
gilded spurs, her cousins, and reflected upon 
the pains nature takes to bring about dishar- 
mony in families. 


PE TER WE A VER. 1 8 5 

As the carriage approached the gates of 
Benvenew two little darkies raced out and held 
them wide open, with a special grin and duck 
for the gentleman on horseback, whose dimes 
rolled in the dust, sped by the careless, free 
hand of one who remembered himself an Arm- 
strong, forgetting the preacher. But the set 
of the preacher was strong in the man. It was 
apparent at dinner ; that excellent dinner where 
the golden brown turkey at one end of the 
table was rivaled by the noble ham at the 
other end, and where corn-pudding, sweet po- 
tatoes, and tomatoes in firm, rose-red slices, 
were reflected in crystal-clear goblets of cut' 
glass, standing sentinel-like upon napkins 
of double-wove Barnsley damask, white 
as sunbleach and rain water could make 
them. 

Armstrong sat at Mistress Amanda’s right 
hand, with Nellie opposite, her hands con- 
stantly busy playing over the jellies and entrees 
set in front of her to serve. Drooping curls 
half-hid her face, but his eyes dived keenly 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


186 

into the cool, sweet depths of hers when by 
chance she looked up. And she had the pleas- 
antly fluttered sense of being watched by one 
curiously sympathetic with her 

“ You are like your father,” Mistress Aman- 
da was saying. “ Like what he was at your 
age. I met him once at a tournament held 
over at Purcellville. A pleasant part of the 
country, and a pleasant time we young people 
had that day.” 

“ And you was crowned queen o’ love and 
beauty, Mandy,” cooed old Mrs. Powell. “ I 
see by your face though, sir, that you don’t 
hold to these fashions ? ” 

“ Should I hold to any customs that encour- 
age vanity and display, and un-Christian ri- 
valry ? ” returned the young preacher. “ I un- 
derstand there is to be a tournament held here 
in the fall, at Rocky Point. I shall feel it my 
duty to warn all our young people who have 
felt the strivings of the Spirit, not to yield to 
the temptation.” 

“ I am so glad ! ” the fleeting cry came from 


PETER WEAVER. 


187 

Nellie involuntarily, and when Armstrong cov- 
ered her flushing face with a soft look of en- 
couragement, she continued sedately : 

“ I think such things take us too far away 
from our serious duties in life.” 

“ Nellie is passing through one of those 
phases peculiar to youth,” observed her mother. 
“ Attacks of acute religious fanaticism are a 
sort of moral measles.” 

“ Madam ! ” uttered Armstrong in a shocked 
tone, but meeting that calm glance of the 
elder woman, secure in the dignity of her deeper 
life experiences, he softened his tone apologet- 
ically : 

“ I beg you will not construe my criticism 
of the custom of tournaments into a criticism 
of yourself. Doubtless there was formerly a 
greater license in the Church concerning these 
things. Even dancing picnics were toler- 
ated ” 

“ Why not ? ” asked the bold lady. “ We 
must have amusements, we southerners. We 
are not Puritans.” 


i88 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


“ Shall the Puritans hold their faith more 
purely than ourselves? I see no reason why 
the very enthusiasm and eagerness for amuse- 
ments natural to southerners should not be 
turned into the channels of a deeper Chris- 
tianity.” 

Quite an argument ensued, in which it was 
notable that the forces were drawn up three to 
a side ; old Mrs. Powell, Nellie, and Armstrong 
against Mistress Amanda and her two cousins, 
city-bred girls, desirous of shining in conversa- 
tion. 

Mistress Amanda carried on the battle with 
one hand behind her, so to speak. She dis- 
dained to put forth her full intellectual strength 
to rout a stripling. And half her mind was 
wandering abroad in a flight after her hero, 
pursuing his angry way homeward. Could her 
imagination have given her a true picture of 
Peter’s adventures on the road, she might have 
dropped the feint of interest in the dinner-table 
topics to enjoy the thrill of real feeling, in a 
more singular and vigorous turn of events than 


PETEK WEAVER . 189 

was promised by the mild social elements gath- 
ered at Benvenew. 

Peter had met his enemy on the lane turn- 
ing off toward The Oaks, Funkhausen’s place. 
He was driving along at a leisurely pace in his 
carryall alone, enjoying his meditations, when a 
fierce-browed horseman reined up beside him 
and caught the relaxed reins from his hands. 

“Git out o’ that, Thed Funkhausen,” com- 
manded Peter. “ I’ve a word or two with you.” 

“ Hadn’t it better keep till another time?” 
suggested Funkhausen in a tone meant to be 
pacific. 

“ No, it won’t keep ! ” thundered Peter, who 
had no mind to let his present wrath cool into 
his habitual, easy-going tolerance. And there 
was a force of circumstances in his having pos- 
session of the road and the reins, which com- 
pelled Funkhausen to step out ; Peter dis- 
mounting at the same minute. 

“What ’d you shut my cow up for and 
starve her to death ? ” 

A smile of sly enjoyment overspread Funk- 


190 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


hausen’s face. He did not deny the charge, 
seeming rather to take pride in an achievement 
so original. Funkhausen feared his huge an- 
tagonist, but beside being a burly man him- 
self, he believed that he was near enough to 
home for his negroes to be within call ; and 
there was a small army of farm-hands in his 
service. 

So, charges were met by defiance, and Peter’s 
temper ran no risk of dying away without find- 
ing vent. It came to blows before many ex- 
pletives had made the air hot, and, as might 
have been expected, Funkhausen was tendered 
to the care of mother earth, with dust for his 
pillow. But although with that issue Peter 
began to find forgiveness sprouting in his soul, 
new complications arose. The farm-hands were 
within call, taking their ease before their cabin 
doors, and enjoying the smell of their dinners 
cooking. At Funkhausen’s lusty cries they 
came pouring down the lane, realizing the duty 
of obedience to the man who supplied their 
bread. 


PETER WEAVER. 


191 

“Surround him ! Surround the low-lived 
coon!” yelled Funkhausen, sputtering and 
winking, wiping the blood from his nose with 
his best Sunday pocket-handkerchief. 

And the negroes closed around the tall fig- 
ure, standing firm and solid, with nothing but 
his fists to oppose to the force of numbers. 

The negroes numbered fifteen men. 


III. 

The sunshine of a perfect October day lay 
full upon Peter Weaver’s great front porch, as 
he sat in his red armchair, smoking his after- 
dinner pipe, two months after his encounter 
with Funkhausen. Behind the porch lay the 
house; a minor affair, yet comfortable in its 
way. So long as weather permitted Peter 
lived upon his porches, the back one, fronting 
east, in the mornings, and the front one with 
the western exposure in the afternoon. From 
it he could see the goose-pond where his flock 


SOUTHERN- HEARTS. 


192 

disported, and the road, not very lively, but 
with passing features of interest to a society 
loving mind. 

His bachelor housekeeping was simple, his 
farm small, and the good grandparents had 
brought with them from Holland a store of 
Dutch guelders which had been converted into 
mining stock in due course, and, passing down 
to Peter, made his living a comfortable one. 
Had he chosen to loaf all day long upon his 
porches his income would have enabled him 
to do so. And old Aunt Vina and her two 
sons would not have lost their wages, nor the 
church its annual liberal check. But Peter had 
an industrious streak in him, and worked with 
all his might when he did work. Afterwards 
he indulged himself in spells of meditation and 
verse-writing. 

H ow he had first gained courage to put him- 
self before the public as a poet is a mystery. 
Possibly he had hopes of making his name 
illustrious in little Nellie's eyes. It is certain 
that a copy of the Purcellville Banner with 


PETER WEAVER. 


193 

heavy lines in red ink drawn around a sonnet 
addressed to “ A Sweetbriar Rose/' and signed 
“ Heinrichs,” had reached Benvenew the day 
after being issued. Since then the poet had 
branched out in other directions and the Ban- 
ner s columns were enriched with an amount of 
original matter that led the editor seriously to 
contemplate the possibility of abandoning a 
“ patent outside,” and depending upon home 
talent to fill his space. Eventually, the disguise 
maintained by “ Heinrichs ” was penetrated by 
his neighbors and Peter was made the recip- 
ient of attentions varying from invitations 
to dine and display his talent for versifica- 
tion at the Gordons, all the way down to 
lampoons in chalk upon his barn-door, and 
hootings from the six red-haired little Clap- 
saddles. 

Pendleton Haywood, riding by one morning, 
espied the sturdy poet with his sleeves rolled 
up, deep in molasses-making ; and thought it 
opportune to call out : 

“ Peter, make me a rhyme ! ” 

13 


194 SOUTHERN HEARTS. 

With extraordinary quickness this rejoinder 
was thundered back : 

“ I’m busy just now, 1 
Stirring my molasses, 

I’ve no time 

To make a rhyme 

For every fool that passes.” 

And Pendleton went on his way a sadder 
man ; for the six red-haired little Clapsaddles 
were as usual hanging about the goose-pond, and 
had made themselves masters of this colloquy ; 
which, consequently, spread with the rapidity 
of a Virginia creeper, from Rocky Point to 
Purcellville. 

There is no doubt that Peter’s gift was a 
great comfort to him, and, modest as he was, 
he accepted the inevitable fame growing out of 
his contributions to the Banner with a certain 
degree of complacency. The power of looking 
at the events of life with a view to turning 
them into poetry invests even common subjects 
with interest, and when any really exciting 
thing happens the gifted mind is conscious of 


PETER WEAVER. 


J 95 


a wonderfully uplifting feeling, such as the 
admiral of a fleet may experience when an 
enemy’s ironclad opens fire. Opportunity is 
the spur that starts genius into a canter. 

Peter sat smoking, and thinking how to turn 
the fight between himself and Funkhausen into 
a poem which should arouse the enthusiastic 
admiration of all readers of the Bayiner ; in- 
cluding Mistress Amanda and perhaps Nellie. 

When Funkhausen had set his hirelings upon 
the stalwart Peter he had not taken into ac- 
count two things : one was that there was not 
a darkey in the county without a feeling of 
personal liking for the kind-hearted poet, and 
the other, that negroes are cowardly except 
under the influence of excitement. The fore- 
most man in the group happened to be one to 
whose family Peter had rendered many kind- 
nesses. When the blue eyes of his master’s 
victim looked steadily into his own, Jake felt a 
curious tremor of mingled superstition and per- 
plexity, which caused him to fall back on his 
comrades instead of advancing to the attack 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


196 

Funkhausen was doing his best to urge on. 
Peter’s raised fist conveyed reminder as well as 
menace. That hand had been ready to extend 
help to those in need, but it was equally ready 
to strike down an offender. And the negroes 
did not like the looks of the strong, resolute 
white man standing upon the defensive, alone, 
but with right upon his side. They began to 
mutter and to fall back, until the whole mass 
had melted away ; in some way bearing Funk- 
hausen along with them. Whereupon Peter 
mounted his horse and quietly rode home. 

But the county rang with the affair. As 
much to vindicate himself as for vengeance, 
Funkhausen had Peter up before the church 
for discipline. But to his disgust, and to the 
delight of eveiybody else, Deacon Greene de- 
clared that Peter had done nothing to be dis- 
ciplined for ; but that “ if he had n’t fought 
Funkhausen the church would have turned 
him out ! ” 

Mistress Amanda gave a dinner party and 
made Peter the guest of the occasion. It hap- 


PETER WEAVER. 


197 

pened upon Michaelmas and old Aunt Viny 
insisted, for luck’s sake, upon dressing a pair of 
her master’s geese, and sending them to Ben- 
venew. So that Peter had the pleasure of seeing 
pretty Nellie blush under the sly allusion made 
by one of the guests to the old proverb about 
“ the maid that eats of the bachelor’s goose.” 
But on the other hand, common sense told him 
that blushing was with Nellie no sign of especial 
embarrassment. Indeed, it was probable that 
the proverb was unknown to her. She was 
much occupied, all dinner-time, with the account 
young Armstrong — now ordained and installed 
as the regular preacher for Sneaking Creek 
church — was giving her of a bush-meeting in 
the woods back of Purcellville. He was anx- 
ious for her mother to take her to the meet- 
ings, but Mistress Amanda did not like bush- 
meetings ; and she was not inclined to encourage 
any species of religious excitement in Nellie. 
Peter would gladly have offered to drive her 
but he could not venture to do so in the face of 
her mother’s disapproval. It seemed a little 


198 so uthern he a r ts. 

hard to him that he should not be able to avail 
himself of this little opportunity to please the 
young girl. And if jealousy had been possible 
to him he must have felt a twinge of it in see- 
ing how absorbed Nellie was in the talk Arm- 
strong was pouring into her ears. But the 
time had not yet come for him to recognize the 
significance of what was going on under his 
eye. The happenings of our daily life are like 
the characters at a masked ball Capering be- 
fore us, they seem entirely unrelated to ourselves 
in any particular, and it is only when they un- 
mask that we know them for what they are. 

Peter, the dreamer, wove some new fancies 
about his dainty love as he sat with a writing 
pad upon his knee, and his short pipe between 
his lips. The world was very beautiful to him. 
And to-morrow would be Sunday; the happiest 
day of all the good week; for he would see 
Nellie at church. 

The collie dog at his feet jumped up and ran 
down the walk. At the gate stood a shabby 
phaeton made distinguished by carrying Mis- 


PETER WEAVER. 


199 

tress Amanda. As he hastened out she called 
in a loud, clear tone : 

“ Good morning, Mr. Weaver, have you any 
turkey eggs to spare ? ” 

Her hand, in its old gray gauntlet, was ex- 
tended, and as he took it for a second in his own 
she added, lower, 

“ So much as a concession to our neighbor’s 
greed, yonder ! ” 

Peter looked and saw Elmer Hall approach- 
ing, driving a pair of hogs before him. Taking 
the cue, he talked about turkey eggs until the 
grunts had died away in the distance. 

Then said madam — “ I didn’t come to talk 
about turkey eggs.” 

Peter drew a hand through his handsome 
hair; looked down reflectively and looked up 
smiling. “Will you come in?” he suggested. 
A decided shake of the head answered that. 
“ My five years’ seniority wouldn’t excuse it — 
to the Greenes and Aylors ! I doubt if even 
my mother could venture it. We may risk ten 
minutes here at the gate.” 


200 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


Mistress Amanda began flicking her whip at a 
thistle ; her forehead gathering lines. Suddenly 
the words shot from her : 

“ You are a patient man ! ” 

“Well! You haven’t come two miles to 
tell me that ? ” 

“ But I have. Patience is a most unusual 
virtue — in a man, but there is such a thing as 
having too much of it. Do you remember the 
story of the fox and the wolf ? ” 

“ The nursery tale ? Let me see. I think 
my grandmother used to tell it to me, but that 
was long ago. I forget the point.” 

“ The wolf bit him — put out his eyes, and so 
on, the fox simply saying all the time, ‘ pa- 
tience ! ’ Till finally the enemy tore his heart 
out, and the fox found, too late, that patience 
is the most dangerous of all virtues.” 

Peter gazed at the narrator of this fable in 
amazement. For the first time in his life the 
idea that women are incomprehensible found 
lodgment in his mind. 

“ Ah, I see you think me daft,” said his friend. 


PETER WEAVER. 


201 


And not for the first time in her life, by any 
means, she found a man dense. 

“ In so many plain words, then, are you not 
in love ? ” 

The blood seemed on the point of bursting 
through Peter’s skin ; his head weighed a 
ton ; his legs became pipe-stems. He gasped 
something inarticulately. Then, manly sense 
asserted itself. His look grew steady and grave 
and nobody could have found fault with his 
manner, as he said : 

“You know I love your daughter. I reckon 
everybody knows that.” 

Mistress Amanda turned impulsively. Her 
face had been carefully averted during this 
conversation, but now she let her eyes meet 
his. There was the emphasis of a kept-down 
excitement in her tone : 

“ Everybody except the one person who 
ought to know it. It is a well-kept secret so 
far as she’s concerned.” 

“ I’ve only been waiting for the right time — 
she’s so young — such a child 1 ” Things danced 


202 SOUTHERN HEARTS. 

in the sunshine before the man’s eyes. His 
long, lovely dream ! — this was so sudden a call 
to hard reality; he could not waken in a 
minute. 

“ Nellie is not a girl to be won by accumu- 
lated acts of worship,” said Mistress Amanda 
tersely. “ Some girls can be won in that way ; 
romantic girls. They would be flattered at 
being made the subject of verses ; would like 
to feel that a great, powerful creature trembled 
before them. But Nellie is wonderfully free 
from that sort of vanity. So far from under- 
standing the real feeling that is at the bottom 
of all the favors you show her she looks upon 
you as a sort of good godfather who has a 
fanciful, half-playful preference for her. You 
have never come near enough to her to touch 
the ruling motive of her character.” 

It sprang to Peter’s lips to ask what that 
was ; but he forbore the question. There 
seemed to him an indelicacy in arriving at a 
comprehension of his love through another 
person’s perceptions, even if that person was 


PETER WEAVER. 


203 


her mother. Mistress Amanda, however, was 
no muddy stream whence truth must be labo- 
riously filtered out, but a clear fountain, throw- 
ing facts high and rapidly in the air for the 
dullest seer to take in. 

“ She has a large vein of the practical in her. 
Probably you think— all you men think— that, 
with that soaring look, her feet never touch the 
ground. But you may take sentimental flights 
into the region of romance for the next ten 
years without interesting her enough to make 
her even look to see where you are. Don’t 
woo her with poetry, my friend. She never 
reads it. I never saw her with any book of 
verse in her hand except a hymn-book.” 

A wild idea of putting his talent to this use 
came to Peter. After a moment’s reflection 
he turned it out, as he would have locked his 
barn door against a suspicious steed bearing 
about him marks of gipsy ownership. And 
herein did my honest hero show his Dutch de- 
scent in his characteristic rejection of schemes 
out of the range of his natural inclination. 


204 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


“ I’m not much of a poet,” he said, with an 
effort at a laugh. 

“ You look at things rather too much from 
a sentimental standpoint,” observed Mistress 
Amanda. She had beaten the thistle quite to 
powder, and, laying down her whip, adjusted 
her gauntlets and gathered the reins into a 
firm grasp. Her fine black eyes had a singular 
expression. 

“ Not too much for some women. The kind 
of sentiment there is in you is the kind that 
makes a man loyal, tender, and — of all things 
the rarest ! — appreciative toward the woman 
you may marry. I wish girls were able to dis- 
criminate between the shepherding qualities in 
men and the huntsman’s qualities. But they 
like the sound of the horn and the dash of the 
horses— the fiery eye and the masterful grip ! 
Only after their gallants have thrown aside all 
their pretty trappings and come down to the 
plain garb of the household boss do they learn 
that a little kindness and consideration in a 
husband outranks all the more showy qualities.” 


PETER WEAVER. 


205 


lt Nellie certainly ain’t one to be taken in by 
a glittering outside — I sh’d think,” Peter re- 
marked. 

“ Not of the kind you have in your mind. 
But she is peculiarly constituted — extremely 
susceptible to anything like an appearance of 
superiority of the moral sort ; or, not so much 
moral — I wish it was that ! — but spiritual sort. 
Some girls pine for a man to take them in hand 
and lead them along the straight and narrow 
path ; and a thorny path their saintly director 
generally manages to make it for them. Bah, 
I’ve no patience with the ‘ Queechy ’ species of 
hero ! ” exclaimed Mistress Amanda, lashing 
her whip in the air. Her horse, however, had 
sensibilities of his own, and taking this as a 
definite appeal to his own intelligence he 
started down the road at a pretty brisk pace, 
carrying his mistress off with excellent stage 
effect, her exit speech vibrating in Peter’s as- 
tonished ears. 

He stood leaning upon the gate, after she 
had turned the corner of the lane, foi fifteen 


206 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


minutes ; his cheerful face clouded slightly as 
he chewed the cud his friend had shown him, 
gazing, ox-like, at the present surroundings 
that lay about his feet, and unable to realize, 
even after some effort, the meaning of the sug- 
gestions that had been made as to .possible 
dangers lurking in the future. 

There was a placidity about Peter amounting 
to dulness, when he was pricked upon the mat- 
ter of threatened changes. Your light-weight 
men, nervous, springy, and quick-glancing, are 
full of apprehensions ; they believe that it is 
no more than likely that to-morrow may be 
doomsday, and they prepare themselves even 
for the most improbable crises. But two hun- 
dred pounds gives a certain faith in the estab- 
lished order of things, and it is a significant 
fact that bulk and the conceit that the world 
moves slowly, go together. Foretellers are so 
apt to have a lean and meagre frame that I 
should be loth to trust the pretensions of a 
prophet over-endowed with flesh. So the fact 
that Peter had a constitutional dislike to beine 


PETER WEAVER. 


207 


stirred up to initiative acts must be laid to his 
girth and his double chin ; not to any lack of 
fine feeling. His affection for Nellie had be- 
come so much a part of himself that it partook 
of his temperament, and was deliberate and 
sober ; incapable of sudden transitions. Ador- 
ing her at a distance had the charm of familiar- 
ity, and although in sentimental moods the 
man liked to picture his star, his flower, as a 
little housewife, seated of evenings by his side 
before the fire, with some sewing in her dainty 
fingers, and a tenderly inclined ear toward the 
thing he might like to read to her; still, he had 
grown so used to thinking of such scenes as 
afar off that to be suddenly desired to look at 
the necessity of at once taking steps to make 
his dream a reality, or else to abandon hope of 
ever making it one, was to ask too much of his 
optimistic nature. For what is an optimist but 
a person who believes that everything will turn 
out all ri^ht ; whether he chooses to go to 
work at dawn or lie in bed till twelve ? 

But, Peter’s indolence had a tinge of nobility 


208 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


in it. He saw a young girl, happy in her igno- 
rance of life’s responsibilities, fresh, sweet, 
and bright, with the reflection of her own in- 
nocent and tender fancies shining in her un- 
clouded eyes, and he was loth to interpose his 
tall shadow between her and the landscape. 
His wish had been to stand aside until she 
should come gradually to recognize him as an 
agreeable feature of it, perhaps to learn to look 
upon him as something indispensable to her 
life, making a part — a large part of her happi- 
ness. Some men of generous nature prefer to 
have a woman turn toward them of her own 
accord rather than to put forth the effort that 
makes wooing an affair of capture. It is pretty 
certain to happen, though, that the choice of a 
man of this view is apt to fall upon a girl 
whose instinct is not so much womanly as 
feminine. And those who have studied woman- 
kind will understand the distinction. 

But Mistress Amanda’s point had, neverthe- 
less, been made, for she had given Peter to 
understand that there was a rival in the field. 


PETER WEAVER. 


209 


And the most optimistic of men does not fail 
to experience certain sensations in his brain 
extending to his strong right arm, when an in- 
truder threatens to snatch away the glass where 
he is quietly watching the full bead gather and 
waiting to raise it to his thirsting lips. 


IV. 


If Peter’s thoughts had sought his rival they 
would have found him at a certain fine old 
mansion bearing upon the face of the stone 
gate-post the name ROSELAWN. A well shad- 
ed drive swept up to the doorway, hospitably 
broad, and in seasonable weather open, giving 
a view of such a hall as can only be found in an 
old southern house. Family portraits looked 
down from the walls upon the carefully pre- 
served furniture, recognizing, it may be, with 
some satisfaction, the presence of articles that 
had been in favor during their lifetime. 

It was Monday morning, and breakfast time, 

14 


210 


SOUTHERN HE A R TS. 


according to the habits of the Armstrong 
family. The judge was in his place, his wife, 
comely, neat, and quiet, was in hers, and the 
three daughters, Laura, Violet, and Bess, had 
come in severally, and slipped into their chairs 
after a warm greeting to their father and a 
rather less impulsive and loving one to their 
quiet mother. 

“ Miles not down?” said Violet, the spright- 
liest of the sisters ; a slim girl with a delicately 
up-tilted face in which dark eyes and a saucily 
curved mouth prepared one for good-humored 
but probably pointed banter. 

“Down!” repeated that personage, coming 
in, and dropping discontentedly into the vacant 
chair next to his mother. “ If you had been 
up and keeping your chickens in order instead 
of — whatever else you were doing — I could 
have got some sleep after four o’clock and been 
down before. I wish you’d think proper to 
order that black rooster made into fricassee,” he 
continued to his mother, who had no time to 
reply, however, for Violet put in an instant pro- 


PETER WEAVER . 


2 1 1 


test for her pet Captain Jinks, who was such a 
darling, and so intelligent he could do every- 
thing except talk. 

Miles dropped the subject, not caring to 
compromise his dignity by a dispute over such 
a trifle, but his entire bearing expressed that 
appearance of unappreciated worth which is so 
exasperating to women in a family ; divining, 
as they do, that the root of it is invariably 
some kind of causeless irritation. The girls 
discovered in a minute that Miles had “ got 
out of the wrong side of the bed ” that morn- 
ing ; this supplying a vague, kindly explanation 
of his acerbities of temper. Undoubtedly he 
was cross. It showed in his way of receiving 
a remark that Laura now made. Laura was of 
the languid type of fair women ; heavy-lidded 
gray eyes, peachy skin, and flesh all wrought into 
curving lines. A subdued greed of pleasure is 
the predominating quality of this sisterhood, 
often existing under the perfect disguise of plain- 
tive, gentle renunciation. When thoroughly 
understood they weep the profuse tears of spirits 


212 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


feeling themselves above the comprehension of 
the ordinary mind. 

“ Please get Wash to hitch Peg-leg to the 
phaeton right after breakfast, will you ? ” Laura 
said. “ I must drive over to Miss Annie’s to 
try on my dress she is making for the tourna- 
ment.” 

The light of disapproval kindled in Miles’ 
grave face. 

“ Are you girls going to persist in attending 
that silly entertainment ? ” he inquired. 

“ You certainly didn’t used to think it silly,” 
answered the one chiefly addressed. “ Time 
was — and not so very long ago, either — when 
you rode at tournaments yourself ! I haven’t 
forgotten the tournament at Manasses two 
years ago, when we were visiting cousin Jennie 
Davis ” — 

But Miles’ head had disappeared, following 
his hands in a dive beneath the table for his 
egg-cup, rolled off by a movement of his arm 
that would have seemed scarcely accidental 
could this young gentleman have been sus- 


PETER WEAVER. 


213 

pected of an ulterior wish to cut short some 
embarrassing allusion. Every one is endowed 
with some propensity tending to the discom- 
fiture of others. Laura’s talent in this direction, 
unknown to herself, lay in bringing up people’s 
outgrown inclinations ; so keeping them to the 
mortified level of a self they conceived they had 
risen above and would fain forget. Reminis- 
cences of this kind are peculiarly afflicting to 
young divines, to whom the problem of pre- 
serving an appearance commensurate with the 
severity of their doctrine is often in danger 
from the good memories of their intimate 
friends. Can we wonder that the ordained 
preacher of twenty-two shrank sensitively from 
reminders of the peccadilloes committed by the 
gay youth of twenty ? 

Miles suffered, in the privacy of family life, 
from the tendency to treat him as an ordinary 
young man, whereas, he felt that he had become 
remarkable. To be informed, at the instant of 
assuming a superior tone, that he had been 
used to joining in the customs he condemned 


214 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


was sufficiently humiliating. But Laura’s ob- 
servation held a sting for his irritable conscience 
that she had no idea of. The dropping of the 
egg-cup had stopped her slow speech, for she 
had an acute sense of sympathy for awkward- 
ness in a person ordinarily free from it, being 
herself studiously graceful. 

“ Let Sally bring you another egg,” she was 
good enough to suggest. The yellow damsel 
dawdling against the side table put herself to 
some trouble to carry out the order, for the ad- 
miration that was but lukewarm in the house 
glowed effulgently in the kitchen ; the young 
preacher being idolized by the negroes. 

But Miles’ appetite had been satisfied. He 
pushed back his plate and looked past his 
offending sister into space ; his mind taking a 
flight in search of consolation ending at Ben- 
venew, making some pretty notes of a pair of 
confiding eyes and a sweetly deferential tongue 
that had never uttered a word hurtful to his 
self-esteem. Of one devout disciple he was 
sure. Mingled with his triumph in it was a 


PETEK WEAVER . 


2I 5 

grateful acknowledgment of the immense ad- 
vantage in this connection of quality over quan- 
tity ; the sweetbriar rose being worth all the 
rest of feminine creation. 

“ What’s that about the tournament ? ” the 
judge inquired. Three girlish voices chimed 
an answer of which he extracted the gist at his 
leisure ; managing to arrive at the important 
item, that Miles was setting himself above all 
innocent amusements, and declined to accom- 
pany his sisters to the tournament. 

“ Miles’ nonsense be damned ! ” said the head 
of the house. “ I’ll be your beau if he won’t. I 
reckon I’m young enough yet to go about with 
all of you.” The judge was forty-five, and ex- 
cepting for a little too much fulness of chin, 
and a slight stiffness in his knees, he might have 
passed for the handsome elder brother of his 
son. Secretly, he was proud of the boy and 
looked upon the extreme views he held as the 
natural excess of an enthusiastic temperament 
concentrating itself upon theology. He expect- 
ed Miles to grow more reasonable when his 


2l6 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


first zeal should have worn off. But his own 
disposition was choleric, and while he was look- 
ing forward to an amelioration of the strict 
views held by the young preacher he was fre- 
quently tempted to bluster a little upon their 
points of difference. 

The Armstrongs were rather given to dispu- 
tations, and the household atmosphere was not 
seldom an uncomfortable one for the neutral 
mother, who had positive opinions upon only 
two subjects: the flavor of cookery and the 
good looks of her husband. She was quite 
satisfied that her son treated her respectfully, 
that he had good manners, and that his clothes 
set well ; in less important points he was wel- 
come to follow his own inclinations. During 
little clashes she was accustomed to occupy 
herself with considerations about the next 
dinner. Therefore, Miles was surprised to hear 
her say : 

“ I think Miles is very much in the right in 
not giving his countenance to tournaments. 
As a minister, he couldn’t. They bet on the 


PETER WEAVER . 


217 

horses and betting’s not right. I heard that 
Penny Haywood bet fifty dollars last year and 
lost. I’m sure, Judge, you wouldn’t like Miles 
to bet ? ” 

The judge had given to this unwonted ani- 
mation the compliment of wide-open eyes and 
smiling mouth. 

“No danger of Miles betting ! ” he answered, 
reassuringly. “ All I ask is that he shouldn’t 
be so stiff-necked about his sisters taking their 
enjoyment in the way of all young folks.” 

Miles had again betrayed singular discom- 
fiture at this new suggestion about himself. 
The slow, faint color of one who colors seldom 
and then from mortification, burned in his 
cheeks, and he arose with a muttered excuse 
and left the room, turning at the door to say : 

“ I’ll have Peg-Leg put in the phaeton for 
you, Laura.” 

The instinct to seek comfort for his wounded 
self-love would have driven him straight to 
Benvenew, but it was too early in the day, and 
he had no excuse. The morning wore away 


2l8 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


tediously. Unhappily for the young man the 
things that had once interested him and fur- 
nished occupation for his spare hours were now 
under the ban of his tyrant conscience. He 
had embraced the course known as “ setting a 
good example,” and for the sacrifices involved 
he found recompense both in his own con- 
sciousness of superiority and in the fact that 
Nellie looked on and admired. Yet, if he was 
in danger of becoming a prig, there were sound 
faculties in him that made it quite as probable 
that some sudden turn would swing him into 
the path of practical usefulness. At home he 
met at every turn with just the sort of opposi- 
tion to confirm his dislike of the easy self- 
indulgence that swayed the rest. 

Everybody else in the Armstrong family did 
what he or she wished to do ; it was for him to 
do what he thought right, regardless of inclina- 
tions. Laura was indolently selfish, Violet 
energetically set upon carrying out her own 
plans, and Bess, his Junior by a year, was 
strong-minded ; something that in his view 


PETER WEAVER. 


2 19 

was less endurable than pure frivolity. His 
bitter admiration for her cleverness sometimes 
found vent in expressions of solicitude for her 
future husband, to which she always responded 
that his wife would have her profound sym- 
pathy, for his ideas of the family state were 
founded upon Old Testament precedent, to 
which the new dispensation and womanhood 
were altogether opposed. 

Sauntering discontentedly along the great 
stretch of piazza Miles heard stray bits of his 
sisters’ talk as they sat at work, and contrasted 
it with Nellie’s sweet, sensible remarks, and 
the feeling of her perfection grew strong in 
him. Beginning in agreement of tastes and 
opinions the intimacy between the two young 
people had now reached the stage wnere con- 
scious preference may at any instant change to 
blind attraction. Sedateness and dignity had 
marked their intercourse so far ; but the im- 
pulse Miles felt swelling his breast was the first 
rise of a wave capable of sweeping away all 
the pretty dalliances of friendship, and of car- 


220 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


rying him out on the swift flowing sea of a 
great passion. His was a temperament sure to 
love ardently and he had not dissipated his 
energies prematurely. 

Two o’clock sees our young preacher 
mounted on his Kentucky thoroughbred 
mare, Stella, a beautiful chestnut, tractable 
only with her owner. As he leaped into the 
saddle she looked so knowing that he, to try 
her, let the reins hang, and said softly, “To 
Benvenew ! ” Whereupon the intelligent crea- 
ture gave her slender head a light toss, and 
started off up the slope of the hill at a pace 
that brought him, in less than an hour, to the 
grand old park that surrounded that historic 
mansion. 

He had feared to find Nellie, as usual, sur- 
rounded by the rest ; but as he drew near the 
little summer-house, covered with a luxuriant 
grape-vine, now rich in purple clusters, he saw 
her standing there, a basket on her arm, filling 
it with the grapes. In a moment he was on 
the ground beside her, Stella standing still, 


PETER WEAVER. 


221 


untied, and docile to his wish as an obedient 
child. 

At the first shy glance she gave him, Miles 
forgot the smart to his vanity that had sent 
him to her, forget everything but that the 
sweetest girl in the world stood there, blushing 
under his ‘fixed gaze, her little fingers trembling 
in his grasp, for when she laid her hand in 
his he suddenly found it impossible to let it 

“ Come and sit down, please,” he said, draw- 
ing her inside the bower and seating himself 
beside her on the rustic bench. “ It is an age 
since I saw you.” 

“Yesterday?” questioned Nellie, demurely 
raising her brows. 

“ I don’t count seeing you in a crowd. The 
last time we really had any time together was 
at the fair — away back in September. There 
are so many things I have always wanted to 
talk with you about. You are the only person 
that has a real sympathy with me in the work 
I am trying to do here, Miss Nellie, And 


222 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


you don’t know how dearly I value your sym- 
pathy/’ 

Now, my innocent, modest beauty had 
known what it is to hear manly voices sink 
into tender cadence, declaring her sympathy 
necessary to all their aims and enterprises in 
life, nor had the deeper experience of that 
special pleading, to which this is the prelimi- 
nary, been wanting. The practical sense her 
mother had spoken of gave her intimation of 
the thing that yet lay, half unsuspected, in the 
depths of Armstrong’s mind, like the sweet 
arbutus under the smothering cedar. The cedar 
here was the young man’s egotism, claiming 
attention as its right, and some storm wind 
would have to sweep the prickly covering away 
before the delicate blossoms of real love re- 
vealed themselves. 

And the storm wind was even at that mo- 
ment brewing. It is usually while we are most 
free from forebodings, most satisfied with our- 
selves, that the ugly head of misfortune thrusts 
from around the corner and brings us with a 


PETER WEAVER . 


223 


shock to a recognition that the past is perpetu- 
ally linking itself with the present, and that a 
forgotten sin is capable of coming to life after 
we have left it in the desert to starve. 

Nellie had begun to murmur that she was 
happy if anything she could do was a help to 
him, when her soft speech was interrupted by 
a flying scout from the house, a small negro 
boy, whose bare heels scarcely rested upon the 
ground while he delivered in emphatic voice a 
message from Mistress Amanda : 

“ Miss Nell, yo’s ter go straight ter th’ 
house, ef yo please, ter say good-by ter Mr. 
Beeswax afore he leaves. Lemme tote de 
grapes.’' 

The basket was seized, and the scout began 
the march, looking back every instant to be 
assured that the young pair followed. 

They followed with vexation in the heart of 
one, at least. To the other it was more of a 
habit to submit her will to others, so her face 
remained calm and her tones gentle as she re- 
plied to the slight remarks Armstrong forced 


SOU THERN HE A R TS. 


224 

himself to make. At the door the scout left 
them to deposit his burden in the kitchen and 
go back after Stella, whom he was burning to 
mount, not dreaming of the experience that 
was in store for him. 

The young pair entered the parlor and found 
Mistress Amanda and old lady Powell enter- 
taining a short, keen-eyed, sallow man whose 
age was not to be easily guessed. His occupa- 
tion might have been set down as mercantile, 
and he was, in fact, a commercial drummer. 

“ Mr. Beesly, let me present you to Mr. Arm- 
strong, our minister,” said Mistress Amanda, 
formally. 

The stranger bowed with ironical exaggera- 
tion. “ I have met Mr. Armstrong before,” he 
said, in what struck her as a disagreeably sig- 
nificant tone. She gave a swift, searching look 
at the young preacher. 

Armstrong was standing with a rigid air of 
dignity that sat not ill on his handsome person. 
But he had suddenly grown very pale. 


PETEK WEAVER . 


225 


V. 

It spoke well for Armstrong that, at the very 
instant of running into a most unexpected and 
disagreeable dilemma, he did not wish he had 
been warned so that he might have avoided it. 
A Gorgon would have been a winning object to 
him in comparison with the wiry little man 
now smiling a curiously double-faced smile at 
him, but beyond the involuntary pallor that had 
come he gave no sign of discomfiture ; and 
after a sharp glance to see how his salutation 
had been met, Beesly turned away with a 
mutter that lost itself in his bushy whiskers, 
“ true grit ! ” and began to make himself fasci- 
nating to Nellie. 

She had been sent for to bid this forty-second 
cousin good-by, but now she was here he 
seemed in no haste to depart. Leaving Arm- 
strong to the tender mercies of Mistress Amanda, 
he followed the young girl over to her grand- 

15 


226 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


mother’s sofa, where she had shyly taken 
refuge, and drawing up a chair in front of the 
two, bent himself to entertain. 

No men have more facility in this line than 
“ drummers.” They learn to observe human 
nature and become adept at humorous descrip- 
tion of adventures, taking pains to tone their 
note up or down to suit their company. It can 
be a “ bray ” among other men, and a “ coo ” 
with women. For the chaste ears of old lady 
Powell, and her innocent granddaughter, 
Beesly’s talk was a light sparkle of harmless 
fun that drew the laughter of both. Nellie 
had a sense of fun — not humor — under her 
demureness, and she was pleased and amused 
as he meant her to be. 

To the investigating glances Armstrong 
threw toward her corner from time to time, 
there was presented the singular spectacle of 
the girl who had, but a few minutes before, 
been blushing under his words of admiration, 
seeming wholly content with the exchange of 
another man’s company for his own ; even al- 


PETER WEAVER. 


22 / 


though she must have realized that an inter- 
view had been interrupted which promised to 
be an important one. 

Important to the lady, Sir Egoist? Mark 
her now, leaning back against the red silk 
cushions, as Beesly bends eagerly forward in 
the full swing of some fine narrative; the 
dimpling smile showing a glimpse of even, 
milk-white teeth behind a bud of a mouth, 
dewily innocent as a baby’s. The light in the 
wily fellow’s eyes is reflected in her hazel ones 
as she catches the point of his sketch, and now 
she hides her lovely face against her grand- 
mother’s ample bosom, in an outburst of mirth 
so rare with her as to seem almost indecorous. 
Has it ever been your good fortune, Miles 
Armstrong, to arouse so hearty an interest and 
sway so readily that timid nature ? She has 
certainly forgotten you, and the serious busi- 
ness of life you are so fond of discoursing with 
her, in the glow of feelings natural to youth 
and feminine love of enjoyment. 

Armstrong’s face grew gloomy, and his 


228 SOUTHERN HEARTS. 

conversation absent-minded, while Mistress 
Amanda, taking note of everything, was led to 
speculate on a set of possibilities that had 
never before suggested themselves to her astute 
intellect. Was it possible that the law of con- 
trasts, leading the fancies of men and maidens 
to attach themselves to the persons most dis- 
similar, could apply to her daughter Nellie, for 
whom she had been anticipating a very differ- 
ent inclination ! Girls were capable of such 
freaks. After all, if it were not for Peter 
Weaver, the idea of Beesly as a permanent 
member of the family would not be so un- 
welcome. His shrewd sense and light views 
formed a very good balance to the over-serious- 
ness of the young girl. Mingled with a pang 
for her silent and devoted hero, Mistress 
Amanda felt a certain satisfaction in this intro- 
duction of a new player into her little domestic 
drama. She became more affable with the 
young preacher. 

These two had never yet been able to strike 
upon a single topic of mutual interest where 


PETER WEAVER. 


229 


the clash of disagreement did not instantly 
lead to silence. 

“ Let us harmonize upon the weather,” 
Mistress Amanda had once observed when 
argument had threatened to become personal. 
But one cannot always talk about the weather. 
She tried apples. 

“ Is your father shipping his usual quantity 
of golden pippins to England this fall ? I 
hear that he has had the honor of furnishing 
some to the queen’s own table ; that her pref- 
erence is for pippins.” 

“ Three thousand barrels, I believe,” said 
Armstrong, in a lukewarm response. 

“ Indeed ! That means quite a nice ^return 
in money ; ” her tone had a tinge of regret for 
her own exclusion from so excellent a business 
arrangement. The orchard at Benvenew was a 
fairly fine one, but its full resources were un- 
developed for lack of capital. If she had the 
money Mistress Amanda felt sure she might 
rival the success of the master of Roselawn, 
who was rolling up a fortune before the ad- 


230 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


miring eyes of his neighbors. Envy of a 
neighbor’s superior success is not a Virginian 
trait. All your true Virginian asks for is the 
tithe due to friendship and he will put hands 
in pockets and look on while the enterprising 
compatriot piles up his dollars. But, being a 
woman, Benvenew’s mistress could not and 
did not try to suppress the emulative instinct 
that made her long for an opportunity to prove 
her business capacity. 

Beesly’s ears, sharp as a hunter’s, had caught 
the word “ money,” and with his quick way of 
whirling about, he threw a sentence toward the 
other guest. 

“ By the way, talking of money, Armstrong, 
it’s kind of curious, isn’t it ? — But, never mind, 
we’ll have a chance to discuss that going 
home. What I was going to tell you was 
about the wedding of the turkey-girl in the 
Tennessee mountains,” he continued, turning 
back with equal suddenness to his old and 
young auditors, who had scarcely had time to 
follow his flight with their eyes before he was 


PETER WEAVER . 


231 


with them again, fluent as a blackbird rehears- 
ing a well-practised theme. 

Was it a malicious impulse suddenly checked 
by compunction for the man he was “ cutting 
out,” and toward whom decency demanded at 
least the avoidance of insult upon the top of 
injury? Or was it a mere random arrow from 
his whimsical quiver that had made the young 
preacher start and redden, while his deep eyes 
began to burn with an intense fire that promised 
some strong kind of entertainment for the 
person proposing to accompany him “ home.” 

Whichever it was, Armstrong now made up 
his mind that as his object in coming to Ben- 
venew had been defeated, he would, at least, 
take the initiative in breaking up that little 
stance yonder, toward which he felt unsancti- 
fied resentment. 

He arose. At the movement old lady Pow- 
ell, whose pleasure in the vivacity of her en- 
tertainer had been more than once disturbed 
by the feeling that she was not paying proper 
attention to her minister, gently released her- 


SO UTI1ERN HE A R TS. 


232 

self from her granddaughter’s encircling arm, 
and came towards him. 

“You shorely ain’t thinkin’ o’ goin’, yit, 
Mr. Armstrong ? Why, we hain’t seen nothin’ 
o’ you yit, and it’s seldom enough you come. 
Stay to tea, now ! Mandy, do press Mr. Arm- 
strong to stay to tea ! ” 

“ Will sally-lunn tempt you ? ” smiled Mis- 
tress Amanda, choosing always to suppose 
that the proper appeal to men was through 
appetite. But she overlooked the counter- 
poise of sentiment when a man is under 
twenty-five. Armstrong remained standing. 
A word from Nellie might have changed his 
mind, but although she looked at him she did 
not speak ; and, unfortunately, Beesly did. 
His high-pitched voice made his interference 
doubly offensive to the young preacher’s re- 
fined sensibilities. 

“ Oh, I say, Armstrong, I’m not ready to go. 
Tea-time at Benvenewhas peculiar seductions,” 
and he pointed the remark by a smile at Nellie 
that some observers might have called frank 


PETER WEAVER. 


2 33 


and kind ; others, devilish. So much depends 
upon the point of view. Armstrong’s was that 
of the harsher criticism ; not to be wondered 
at, considering the difference in his feelings on 
entering and departing from Benvenewthat day. 

“ I am not aware sir, that my going places 
any constraint upon you,” said Armstrong with 
the most distant air a man could assume. 

Beesly laughed. What defense is dignity 
against a laugh, with which the company, ig- 
norant of any occult meaning, show an inclina- 
tion to join, moved both by sympathy with the 
joker and the polite wish to smooth over a 
little difficulty between two guests ! Armstrong 
realized keenly that he was at extreme disad- 
vantage, since the animosity that he felt to- 
ward Beesly could not be explained and must 
bear the semblance of ill-temper. That it 
might be interpreted as jealousy did not occur 
to him. It was, however, natural that the 
women should take this view of it. 

Now, Nellie, with all her good and sensible 
qualities, had one little foible. She was not 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


234 

aware of it, and, indeed, her position as the 
recognized beauty of the county was so certain 
to develop the trait in any young woman not 
altogether an angel, that she is excusable for 
having grown just a little bit vain. Hers was 
not the vanity of dwelling in thought upon her 
own attractions, for, in moments of deliberate 
reflection, she was given to a humble estimate 
of herself ; but it was the innocent, childlike 
love of notice, and of the subtle flattery con- 
veyed in being sought out and distinguished 
by attention. Maiden-like, she fled to corners, 
and woman-like there was pleasure in being 
followed. The boldest admirer was likely 
then to gain the ear of modesty that had this 
susceptible spot in it. 

Beesly was wise in making of his small, act- 
ive person a very bulwark against the outer 
world ; his play of wit so filling the space that 
the girl only saw dimly what was going on out- 
side her corner. She looked up to find the 
preacher’s fine form drawn up before her. He 
persisted in going. His somber eyes meant to 


PETER WEAVER. 


235 


convey to her that this was something more 
than an ordinary good-by. 

The ubiquitous Beesly gave her no oppor- 
tunity to realize the situation. A cool clasp of 
her little fingers, a bow, and Armstrong was 
gone from the room. 

Then Beesly sprang up, with a good-humored 
show of despair. “ Plague the fellow ! — if he 
will go, I must tear myself away. I have some- 
thing particular to say to him, and to-morrow 
I start for Chicago. I’ll be back in a week or 
so, though, Cousin Amanda, and you can order 
the sally-lunn then.” 

He shook hands all around, his jolly, hearty 
manner contrasting forcibly with the serious- 
ness of the other, and departed, leaving a track 
of glittering light behind him, as some persons 
do. What matter if the glitter is a tinsel clap- 
trap ? Nonsense helps to make life cheerful, 
and a jolly good fellow is especially a boon in 
country society. 

Mistress Amanda went to the window and 
began dropping the muslin curtains. She liked 


236 SO UTHERN HEA R TS. 

to put this veil between the outer dusk and 
the fire-lit room. 

“ Heigho ! ” she yawned ; “ ‘ what fools these 
men be.’ ” 

“ Mortals , mamma, I think,” was the gentle 
correction of Nellie. 

Her astonished mother stared. “ What 
do you know of Shakespeare ? ” she ejacu- 
lated. 

The young girl blushed. “ Papa used to 
read to us in the evenings sometimes. Have 
you forgotten, mamma? I recollect Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream very well.” 

Her mother spent several minutes in silent 
reflection, studying her daughter. “ I don’t 
know that I understand you as well as I 
thought I did,” she then observed, with un- 
usual softness. 

Nellie came around to the back of her chair, 
putting a soft hand on her shoulder. “ But 
you love me, mamma?” 

“ Love you ? ” Mistress Amanda’s splendid 
eyes grew moist. “Yes, dear, I love you 


PETER WEAVER . 237 

dearly. All the good that can come to me in 
this world is to see you happy.” 

“ That’s right, Mandy,” said old lady Powell 
cheerily. “ But you’s young enough, child, to 
see a heap o’ satisfaction on yo’ own account, 

•a J9 

yit. 

A little negro boy, sprawling on the floor of 
his mammy's cabin, and rubbing his back as he 
could reach it, might have told Mr. Beesly 
something about the paces of the mare, Stella, 
which that gentleman was trying to catch up 
with. A start of five minutes was too much in 
Stella’s favor, if her master had intended flight 
from his persistent acquaintance. When the 
little man swung himself into his saddle, and 
looked here and there and everywhere in the 
fast-gathering dusk for the sight of a horseman 
in the road ahead, there was nothing whatever 
to be seen. 

Beesly was a a poor rider, on a strange, bor- 
rowed horse, and the country was unfamiliar to 
him. Twenty paces from Benvenew the road 
forked, and the commercial traveler had not 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


238 

the slightest idea which path to take. Invok- 
ing good luck, he took the one to the left. It 
went past a farm-house or two, where the 
hungry fellow saw lights twinkling in kitchens, 
and smelled — in imagination — the odor of 
squirrel-stew and corn-pone. After this he 
passed the old mill, and the outlook grew less 
promising. 

“ A plague upon him ! ” cried the baffled 
pursuer. “ I didn’t think Armstrong was the 
man to run away. What did he take me for, 
anyway ? ” 

Darkness comes rapidly in these mountains. 
Beesly found himself skirmishing around in a 
curiously eccentric style, and the certainty that 
he was entirely astray gained his slow credence. 
He was not fortified by a good meal, either, to 
enjoy the cool night breeze that began to play 
through his light summer suit. 

“ Get along ! Go somewhere, I don’t care 
where, so it leads to supper! ” he apostrophized 
the horse, and that animal, left to his own judg- 
ment, bethought himself of a certain hospitable 


PETER WEAVER. 


239 


stable where more than once he had had a good 
meal when business led him in the direction of 
its owner. So, taking a start, he cantered along 
the road at a very creditable pace, and paused 
of his own accord in front of Peter Weaver’s 
gate. 

The front windows of Peter’s cottage were 
wide open, and Beesly had a view of a big 
man in his shirt-sleeves going around a well-lit 
room, holding a book in his hand, and singing 
at the top of an exceedingly powerful voice. 

“ Hallo ! Hallo in there ! ” shouted Beesly’s 
thin falsetto, and presently it dawned upon 
Peter’s comprehension that somebody outside 
was trying to make himself heard. He came 
to the door, holding a lamp high above his 
head, the light casting into relief his ruddy face 
and Titan-like frame. 

“ A handsome fellow, by heaven ! ” thought 
the drummer, who never lost a picturesque fea- 
ture. 

“ Can a gentleman who has lost his way beg 
the favor of an hour s rest and a bit of sup 


240 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


per?'’ he sang out toward the Titan, who re- 
sponded with a hearty : 

“ Sartain, sir ! And most welcome. 'Light 
and come right in. I’ll send a nigger after 
your horse.” 

“ I’m a distant cousin of Mistress Amanda, 
up to Benvenew,” said Beesly, as he entered 
the cottage and proceeded to make himself at 
home in his usual easy fashion. “ I insisted on 
leaving there before supper, and have been 
properly punished by losing my way.” 

“ Cousin to Mistress Amanda ? That gives 
you a claim on me, sir, to any extent,” said 
Peter, throwing a log on the fire, and calling 
out the back door to his cook to hurry up sup- 
per. 

“You see, sir,” he continued, “ living all by 
myself here I’ve fallen into the way of kind o’ 
having meals at any hour I like, and supper’s 
ruther put back to-night. I’m glad it’s so, as 
I’ve the good fortune to have yo’ company.” 

“ Why, I had an idea that I might take sup- 
per along with your preacher here, Mr. Miles 


PETER WEAVER. 


241 


Armstrong, but if you’ll believe me, he went off 
and left me in the lurch, although I had some- 
thing very particular to say to him.” 

“ Possible ! ” ejaculated Peter, his face be- 
coming thoughtful. 

Loquaciousness was Beesly’s prime vice. 
He felt himself aggrieved in this instance, and, 
convinced by the appearance of a bountiful 
supper that his host was a good fellow, and en- 
titled to confidence, he poured out a tale that 
had the unintended effect of impairing Peter’s 
appetite. 

“ You see — it’s this way. Three years back 
now — Armstrong was a minor, anyway, and 
not responsible for the money if he chose to 
put it that way. But he put a bet on Belle 
Noir — a pretty big bet — we fellows sort o’ 
goaded him to it, — and he lost. Plumb five 
hundred dollars he lost, sir ! And if you’ll be- 
lieve me, he wrote a letter to Keats — Keats 
backed Charlie Boy — saying he had no mind 
to ask his governor for the money, that betting 
was against his conscience, anyway, but that, as 


242 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


his honor demanded that he pay up, he earn- 
estly requested for time to do it in. Well, 
Keats said he’d give him time. He was going 
abroad and he’d give him till he came back. 
Now, sir, that was three years ago, and Arm- 
strong’s never given a sign. I met Keats in 
New York last week, and he said he meant to 
come down here and see Armstrong. He says 
he hates a sneak. That’s what I meant to tell 
Armstrong to-night ; that Keats is coming 
here. You see, nobody knows a word about it 
but us three. By the bye, I guess you’d better 
not mention it. I don’t want to make trouble.” 

“You certainly have astounded me, sir,” 
affirmed Peter Weaver. “ Mr. Armstrong’s the 
very last person I’d have suspected of ever get- 
ting into such a box as this. And five hun- 
dred dollars, too. That’s a mighty big lot of 
money to throw away.” 

“If he’s saving up his salary to pay it it’ll 
take him rather awhile to get it together,” 
grinned Beesly. “ What does he get for preach- 
ing?” 


PETER WEAVER . 


243 


“ We pay our preacher two hundred and 
fifty dollars a year, sir. And perquisites,” he 
added, as the drummer gave a significant 
whistle. “ There are perquisites — there’d be 
more if he got married ” — 

“ Perhaps he will before long. There are 
pretty gals down here. Cousin Amanda’s girl 
is a thundering beauty. I shouldn’t wonder if 
Armstrong had got his eyes set that way. 
Little mite strait-laced, though, is Nellie. 
By George, what’d she say if she knew the 
preacher used to bet on horses? Reformed, 
didn’t he ? ” 

“ Mr. Armstrong’s said to have experienced 
sanctification,” said Peter, slowly. 

“ Oh, come, now, that’s too good,” shouted 
the commercial traveler. 

“ There may be such a thing ; I’m called 
skeptical myself. But whether there is or not, 
there’s goodness. And for my part, I believe 
Mr. Armstrong’s an upright, moral, well-mean- 
ing man, and it’s the duty of his friends to 
stand by him,” said Peter Weaver. But deep 


244 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


down in his heart was a cry. The preacher was, 
then, in love with Nellie : did Nellie love the 
preacher ? 

VI. 

The hardest thing in the world to bear is 
self-contempt. The man or woman who has 
once slipped from his own standard of rectitude 
— whatever it is — has henceforth in his soul a 
little Inferno where desperate desire is continu- 
ally carrying a huge stone up a hill and memory 
is as continually rolling it down again. 

Armstrong’s thoughts shaped themselves 
into some such words as these as he galloped 
out from Benvenew. He was not running from 
Beesly through any cowardly impulse ; but be- 
cause he wanted to think the matter all out, 
alone. The moment he had laid eyes on the 
fellow he knew that the thing he had been 
fighting down so long, overlaying by a structure 
of self-denial and good deeds, had come up- 
permost in the foreground of his life, and must 


PETER WE A VER. 


245 

be faced as a sin freshly committed, because to 
the present hour concealed. The young man 
had a strong nature, proud and tender ; a little 
one-sided in its development, and the more 
likely to cut out intense suffering for itself 
through the aid of imagination. When con- 
science lashed he had no instinct to shrink 
away and make excuse ; instead, he cried 
“ Peccavi ! ” feeling that he deserved the more 
because no one but himself knew that he de- 
served it. Herein, although circumstances may 
have made it appear that he was nearly, if not 
quite, a hypocrite, Miles Armstrong proved 
himself none, for he felt that the worst of a 
sin was in its commission, not in the fact of its 
being made public. It would have been a re- 
lief to him all along if that gambling experi- 
ence in his past, when, for a brief space he had 
sowed wild oats, could have been known to all 
the world ; then he might have shouldered 
blame, lived the matter down, and started 
afresh, with a clear page for the future. But 
expediency had been his counselor. She had 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


246 

whispered that his usefulness would be im- 
paired if he let himself appear as a common 
youth ; a preacher should be in a certain sense, 
immaculate ; his faults and follies were between 
himself and his conscience. What he had been 
was not the world’s business ; only what he 
was now. 

And so Armstrong had concealed his fault 
and gone on trying to forget it, but never able 
to do so, until, between looking on the picture 
of what he was believed to be, and what he 
was in his own knowledge of himself, the great 
contrast took the form of an accusation that 
made him out — liar : of all things the meanest 
and most despicable when the lie is one which 
assumes the appearance of a virtue that a man 
has not. 

To the sky the young preacher turned his 
face, worn in a few hours to the sharp outlines 
of pain, and in the dusk and loneliness of that 
mountain path, over which Stella was swiftly 
bearing him home, he made a vow in his heart 
that from this hour he would cease to be the 


PETER WEAVER 


247 

slave of the Lie. He would descend, before 
the eyes of men and women, into the valley 
of humiliation, that he might emerge a free 
soul, even if he must in consequence go on 
with his life stripped of all that made it pleasant 
and useful. 

And then Miles, lifting his hat as if bidding 
farewell to something beloved, rode calmly on 
to Roselawn. 

Again, the little church beside Sneaking 
Creek was crowded as upon the Sunday the 
young preacher had given his first sermon. 
Some indefinite rumor had got abroad of a 
surprise in store for the congregation ; how 
started it would be difficult to say, and nobody 
had the slightest idea of what he expected ; 
only there was an atmosphere of expectancy. 

All the Armstrong family were at church, 
the Judge resplendent with a purple necktie, 
and his wife in a purple silk ; the girls, as 
usual, attired with taste and at considerable ex- 
pense. Mistress Amanda and her mother were 
in their pew, with Nellie between them, charm 


248 


SO UTHEKN HE A K TS. 


ing as the spirit of October, in a carefully 
turned claret-colored poplin and a toque 
trimmed with autumn leaves. And Peter 
Weaver was there ; with a dubious expression, 
and very sore in mind ; wishing to believe the 
best of people under adverse circumstances, and 
nobly ready to put himself out of the question 
if he must do so to make little Nellie happy. 

There was a peculiar stillness as Armstrong 
arose after the hymn that heralded the sermon. 
The young man’s pale, tense look produced a 
general sensation of anxiety. Some good 
mothers in Israel were for handing him up 
their smelling salts. Girls scrutinized his fea- 
tures with their mouths falling apart, wondering 
what dreadful thing had happened to him to 
make his lips so set and his eyes so deep and 
black. But all turned their faces toward him 
with the sure response of sympathy toward 
unaffected feeling. 

“ My people ! ” 

The words were those of an old minister, 
grown gray in service among loved friends ; 


PETER WEAVER . 


249 

but they came earnest and unstudied from the 
heart of the young preacher. Hearts thrilled 
to him, answering the strangely sweet appeal 
that breathed through the notes of that fine 
voice, always beautiful in its modulations, but 
to-day with a new quality that won without his 
hearers knowing why. 

“ You have come for a sermon,” Armstrong 
went on. “ I have no sermon to give you. 
When you elected me to serve as the minister 
of this church I had joy in taking the place you 
gave me. I love the work. At this instant, 
when I am about to give it up, every fibre of 
my nature clings to it, my heart and my mind 
as well. Yet I must give it up. I am not 
worthy to be your minister ; nor now , to be a 
minister at all. And the reason is this. Some 
time ago, before I was ordained, I was for a 
season given over to ungodliness. I fell into 
one sin that by heaven’s grace did not lead to 
worse, as it might have done. It was not a 
thing most of you would call very bad ” — the 
proud Armstrong blood made the speaker’s 


250 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 

head rear slightly. He felt his father’s angry 
eyes upon him and even imagined he heard 
the word “ fool ” ; but he sternly went on : 

“ We southerners are too apt to look with 
indulgence upon social sins. Horse-racing and 
gambling are things you might consider excu- 
sable in a young man, even in one meaning to 
be a minister. These were my failings. I 
don’t exaggerate them so much as to say that 
because I did these things I am unfit to serve 
as your minister. No ; it is not that.” 

A deep breath labored through his lungs, 
and the many staring eyes in front of him all 
seemed to swim together and take on the form 
of a question. What was it, then ? What was 
to come ? 

“ The first duty of any soul is to be thor- 
oughly honest,” continued the young preacher. 
“ He who glosses over his own faults and acts 
as if he had a guiltless past behind him helps 
to spread the fell disease of deceit and hypoc- 
risy ; the great pest of our times. And of this 
baseness I have been guilty. I let it be sup- 


PETER WEAVER. 


2SI 

posed that I had experienced sanctification. I 
came before you unconfessed and with a sem- 
blance of uprightness it was not my privilege 
to claim. All men are sinners, and it is the 
nature of some not to feel their sins acutely ; 
they can go about with light hearts, never 
aware of the yoke a Christian should bear. 
But others are different. Every man accord- 
ing to his nature. We can only be guided by 
the light within. But wo to that man who 
wilfully shuts his eyes to the revelation of his 
own conscience ! St. Paul felt the weight of 
his sins upon his soul and bravely cried out, 1 1 
am the chief of sinners ! ’ He made the world 
see him just as he was, not pretending good- 
ness that did not belong to him. This is the 
right thing to do ; above all, the right and 
only thing for a teacher of men to do. I have 
always felt this, and have acted contrary to my 
convictions. I have lived a lie before you. 
Now, for the first time you see me as I am and 
know that I am not what you thought me. It 
is the just punishment of one who i knows the 


252 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


right and chooses the wrong,’ to lose all he has 
sought to gain. I lose what I value most in 
giving up my privilege of usefulness among 
you. But it is my duty to do this, and I dare 
not shrink from it because it is hard.” 

Soldiers know that valor is born in the heat 
of strife, called out by the sight of waving ban- 
ners, the note of bugles, and the feeling of a 
great mass rushing all together against a foe. 
A far greater effort of courage is made by 
the man who deliberately stands up before his 
friends and makes a confession that may in an 
instant turn their esteem to contempt, and 
leave him alone and defenseless among a host 
of accusers. In making his supreme effort 
Armstrong had not been blind to this probable 
result. His imagination had vividly pictured 
the moment of his humiliation. Nerved to 
carry the thing through, his voice uttered the 
final word without a falter. Then, stepping 
back, he sat down. 

Every sort of confusion prevailed. The 
general feeling was that of excitement and as- 


PETEK WEAVER. 


253 

tonishment, especially among the younger set. 
Very few were able to appreciate the strange 
manifestation of moral greatness that had been 
made before them; and with these the uppermost 
sensation was that of awkwardness. Bluff old 
farmers had grown red and uneasy, aware that 
their young preacher had climbed to a height 
where they could not approach him. They 
shuffled their feet and looked down. The 
women whispered ; some tittered hysterically. 
One got up and crossed the church to say 
something to a friend. It was the signal for a 
general movement, and in a few moments 
nearly everybody had changed their places. 
Armstrong, with his fingers over his closed eyes, 
saw nothing, but he felt terrible vibrations in 
his brain. He was alone ; deserted. In a 
single moment of suffering years can be com- 
pressed, and a sensitive nature grows old fast. 

There was a light touch upon his arm, a touch 
that thrilled him through and through. He 
looked, and standing beside him was beautiful 
Nellie; shy, shrinking Nellie, always dreading 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS. 


254 

any conspicuous position, and wont to hide be- 
hind her mother’s ample shadow. She was upon 
the platform, holding out her small, ungloved 
hand, her eyes shining through tears, her cheeks 
flushed rosy red ; forgetful of shyness, all 
thought of self lost in the outburst of sympathy 
and reverence that had led her feet straight to 
him her heart called lover, leader and highest 
among men. 

The young preacher’s sunken eyes gleamed 
with a new, wonderful hope. They devoured 
the sweet face. Her hand was caught and 
held, pressed hard while he whispered, “Nellie, 
love ! ” and then, mindful of the staring peo- 
ple, Armstrong would have swept her quickly 
back, but the young girl felt to her very finger- 
tips the sense of that great stare. Her head 
dropped, her form trembled, the roses in her 
cheeks turned to fire, and shrinking, faltering, on 
the verge of a burst of weeping, she turned and 
hid her face on the young preacher’s breast ! 

Scarcely a second was given to the people to 
take this sight in before Peter Weaver’s huge 


PETER WEAVER . 


2 55 

form towered on the platform in front of the 
young pair. He had hastened, almost leaped 
up the steps, and behind him Nellie fled to the 
little door at the side of the platform and so 
out from the church. One great throb of pain 
had Peter’s heart given at sight of Nellie on 
Armstrong’s breast, one strong, silent effort of 
renunciation of a lifetime’s hopes he made, and 
then self was put behind him, for good and all. 
He had a duty to perform, and he did it with 
his might. 

“ I want to say a word or two ! ” his great 
voice sang out, silencing the clamor and con- 
fusion in another thrill of curiosity. 

“ I ain’t a speaker, as you all know ” 

A comment from the rear chimed in, “You’re 
a poet ! ” It was Penny Haywood, and Violet 
Armstrong, hanging upon his arm, quickly 
forced him to be silent. 

“ But there air facts in nature that speak for 
themselves, and don’t require eloquent speech- 
making to get people to understand ’em. One 
of these facts is a good man. There are lots of 


256 


SOUTHERN HEARTS. 


good women — God bless ’em! — and some pretty 
good men in an all ’round way. But the rarest 
thing on all of God’s earth is a thoroughly good, 
honest man; one whose acts air as transparent 
as daylight, that stands up before his fellows 
clean and sound, and dares to father everything 
he has ever done in his life, without shamming 
or palliating anything. You know it was this 
kind of an honest man that old Diogenes went 
’round seeking with a lantern and couldn’t find. 
Well, if he’d come seeking him in Fauquier 
County, Virginia, he’d have found him right 
here in the Second Baptist church, and his 
name’s Miles Armstrong!” 

“Good !” pronounced a woman’s voice ; Miss 
Lavinia Powell, not afraid to speak her mind, 
and esteeming it a rare privilege to assent to a 
man’s common-sense. 

“I consider, ladies and gentlemen, that we’ve 
had here before us to-day an exhibition of high 
and fine moral feeling that ought to be a lesson 
to us all our lives. And as for the modesty of 
the man that’s given it, and his idea of being 


PETER WEAVER. 


257 


unworthy to go on preaching to us and all that, 
why, I say — I say that there ain’t another as 
worthy one to be found anywhere, and if you’re 
of my mind, we’ll go right on having Mr. Miles 
Armstrong preach to us as long as he lives ! 
And what’s more,” shouted Peter, while he un- 
necessarily reared himself a-tip-toe, “ I’m darned 
if I think it’ll hurt the church a bit if, to crown 
this occasion, you all join in a cheer of good-will 
to our preacher, Mr. Miles Armstrong and Miss 
Nellie Thomas, his wife — that’s-to-be ! ” 

Then there was laughing and acclamation, 
and crowding toward the platform, and the 
young preacher’s hand was seized and wrung 
until his fingers ached, and his bewildered brain 
ceased to think at all, but left him altogether 
at the mercy of his friends, who nearly tore him 
to pieces in their zeal. 

Peter Weaver for once asserted himself and 
claimed the privilege of driving the young 
preacher to Benvenew — where he was panting to 
go after Nellie — in his own high top buggy. 

He had something to say in private. 

17 


258 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS . 


“ It’s this,” said Peter, laying his broad hand 
earnestly on the young man’s knee, when they 
were well along on the road and no one was 
near. “ I knew about the thing you’ve been 
taking so hard, before you told of it to-day. 
Beesly told me. Now, my dear sir, you want 
money. You don’t want to ask your father for 
it. No need. You’ve done enough. Let me 
help you out o’ this leetle scrape. I’ve more 
money than I know what to do with. I’ve got 
five hundred dollars right here, in this little 
roll, and I want you to take it. Not as a loan ; 
as a gift. Do, now ! ” 

Armstrong protested, thanked him with no 
lack of warmest gratitude, but absolutely re- 
fused. His father was rich, he said, and would 
help him. His road was easy before him now, 
easier than he deserved. All Peter could think 
of to console himself was that he would buy 
Nellie a wedding present with the money. 

Shame-faced little Nellie, hiding behind the 
parlor curtains, longing for Armstrong, and 
fearing to have him come! How quickly he 


PETER WEAVER. 


2 59 

found her and carried her triumphantly to that 
distant corner where a great black horse-hair 
sofa swallowed them up ; the worn horse-hair 
so slippery that he had to put his arm around 
her to hold her on. 

Mistress Amanda was a dumfounded wo- 
man. So swiftly and suddenly had come the 
surprises of that morning that all she could do 
was to contemplate her daughter from a dis- 
tance, and say “ Well ! ” in a tone that meant 
resignation to circumstances. 

But she had had her proud moment. Her 
heart — warm and true yet after bitter life-ex- 
periences — had leaped with delight when Peter 
Weaver made the little speech that with her 
knowledge of him, showed him a hero, capable 
of the most generous sacrifice it is within the 
power of a man to make. “ Hero,” she called 
him, to honest Peter’s immense confusion, as 
they sat sedately in two armchairs before the 
fire, with their backs to the youngcouple in the 
far corner of the spacious room ; talking over 
the details of the great occurrence. 


26 o 


SOUTHERN HEARTS . 


“ For such a sensible woman you air given to 
making too much of the little things men do 
that air right to do,” said Peter, smiling. 

“ So few men do the little things that are 
right,” sighed Mistress Amanda, looking at her 
own past in the bed of fire. “ You are the only 
man I know, Peter, that I would put a heavy 
stake on to take the straight course every 
time.” 

“ What, leave out Armstrong ? ” remon- 
strated Peter, with a jerk of his head backward 
toward the corner. 

“Armstrong has come upon me too sud- 
denly,” complained Mistress Amanda. Then, 
with the generosity of a candid nature she paid 
rightful tribute to what commanded her ad- 
miration. 

“ He is certainly an excellent young man,” 
she said. “ A noble fellow. I’ve thought of 
him more than once as you spoke of him in that 
speech of yours, — ‘ the man Diogenes sought ! ’ 
I trust he will make my little Nellie happy.” 

“Sh^hasthat within her that ensures hap- 


PETER WEAVER 


261 


piness,” said Peter steadily. “ The sweetest, 
soundest heart ever a woman had. Heaven 
bless her! ” 

Mistress Amanda softly stretched out her 
firm, shapely hand, and laid it on his own as 
it rested on the arm of the chair. It was a 
friendly, sympathetic touch. Perhaps un- 
awares, something more went into it than she 
intended. 

Peter looked at her with great kindness. 

“ You and me air getting to be middle-aged 
people, Amanda,” he said. “ The chief thing 
now is for us to make the young people happy.” 

But old lady Powell, apparently dozing in her 
chair on the opposite side of the fire was build- 
ing a double air-castle. She said to herself 
that Peter’s little green cottage would suit the 
young preacher and his bride very well, if its 
master should come to Benvenew to live. 
Nothing was more likely. And Amanda and 
Peter would just hit it off together. Every- 
body could see that. It was perfectly plain. 





A HALT AT DAWN 


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A HALT AT DAWN 1 


Margaret Danvers stepped aboard the 
southern-bound sleeper at Chicago one stormy 
March evening, and as she walked composedly 
to her berth in the middle of the car, the eyes 
of every person present were riveted upon her. 
She wore a closely fitting garment of Russian 
sable, which enveloped her completely, and a 
large beaver hat with drooping plumes, and 
from the single fine diamond flashing at her 
throat to the tips of her dainty Su6de boots she 
looked the model of a fashionable beauty. She 
was the only woman on the car, and before she 
had fairly settled herself comfortably, all the 
men had mentally pronounced their opinion of 
her looks and style, and hazarded a conjecture 
as to her age. Her attendant, a florid man of 
middle age, received the slight degree of atten- 
1 Copyright, 1893, by Romance Publishing Co. 

265 


266 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


tion justified by his seeming only an adjunct of 
the moment. As he left her, he put into her 
hands a bunch of costly roses, which she re- 
ceived with a smile and laid upon the opposite 
seat the instant he was gone. 

Of the score of passengers, two or three 
knew her by sight, for she was, in a way, a pub- 
lic character, but, as it happened, none were 
really acquainted with her, and before long 
even those most deeply interested in her ap- 
pearance yielded to the apathy peculiar to 
sleeping-cars, and subsided into their newspa- 
pers or their rugs, preparing to wear out the 
evening until bedtime. 

Margaret amused herself in watching the fly- 
ing snow and in reverie. Too used to traveling 
to even care to look about her, she yielded to the 
prevailing somnambulistic influence just enough 
to dream without sleeping. At first there 
was in her mind a confusion of events past, pres- 
ent, and to come. Incidents of no importance 
mingled with greater ones, and her reflections 
became mixed with little fanciful suggestions 


A HALT AT DAWN 267 

of things long since forgotten, or, rather, vol- 
untarily put out of mind. She tried to think 
of her career, to recall her triumphs, and to 
dwell upon the possibilities of the future. She 
told herself that music was her life, that all she 
had to do with was the beautiful and the divine 
in art, and that the everyday existence she had 
struggled to rise above was henceforth nothing 
more than an unpleasant memory. 

At twenty-eight she was her own mistress, 
earning an independent income through the 
use of her beautiful voice. The teaching days 
and the drudgery of the class-room had passed, 
and as a concert singer she was favorably known 
in more than one western city noted for its 
critical taste. After a successful winter in Mil- 
waukee and Chicago, she was now upon her way 
to fulfil an engagement in Baltimore, which 
promised more than anything in which she had 
yet engaged. She was in the heyday of her 
powers, admired, in radiant health, conscious 
of her beauty and talent, and entirely satisfied 
with life. What did it mean that, as she looked 


268 


SO U 711 E RN HE A R TS 


from the window with a proud smile upon her 
lips, some tantalizing thoughts should intrude 
themselves, and the mind so entirely self-poised 
should feel, for the first time in years, the 
weakening influence of some emotional fancies? 
It was her boast that she was never lonely, 
never sad, that her whole heart was in the 
work 

The conductor passed through taking tickets, 
and brought her back to the present. And 
after this came the little stir of the porter mak- 
ing up the berths, and she moved to the end 
of the car. In front two men were talking. 

“ Never saw a promise of a worse storm,” 
said one. “ Shouldn’t wonder if the tracks 
were blocked a little ahead.” 

“ Comes from the southwest,” suggested the 
other. “ If necessary, they’ll put on another 
locomotive. We’re bound to get through at 
any rate on this train ; that’s one comfort.” 

By nine o’clock Margaret, enveloped in a 
downy wrapper of dark red, lay courting sleep 
in her section. Over her was spread the fur 


A HALT AT DAWN 269 

ulster, none too warm above the blankets, even 
for her warm blood. The thermometer outside 
would have registered zero, and whiffs of icy 
air found their way every now and then into 
the car. Everything was quiet save her 
thoughts, which began to utter themselves with 
loud, importunate voices, as if answering some 
call without, independent of her control. “ I 
have* happily been able to say all my life that 
I didn’t know what nerves were,” said Margaret 
to herself, “ but I begin to think that from some 
inexplicable cause I am nervous.” 

“ Richard Allen ! ” She started as if the 
words had been spoken in her ear. Swiftly 
memory flew back ten years, and she saw her- 
self standing bareheaded at the gate of her 
father’s house in dear old Leesburg, Virginia, 
where her childhood had been passed ; and be- 
side her, bending tenderly to catch her lightest 
word, the form of her first lover, then a poor, 
obscure young lieutenant in the army. With 
an indifference scarce tinged with pity, since it 
hardly occurred to her in those days that men 


270 


SOUTHERN : HEAR TS 


could really feel, she had met his pleading af- 
fection with an enthusiastic outburst of her 
ambition to lead the artist’s life, to spend her 
energies in self-development, and show what a 
woman wholly devoted to an intellectual and ar- 
tistic career might become. They had sung in 
the choir together, had mingled their voices in 
moments when, inspired by devotional ecstasy, 
it seemed that the two spirits united into one, 
in that mysterious fellowship which belongs 
alike to religion and to love. And yet she had 
no feeling for him above regard : no feeling for 
any one, for anything, but art. 

“You must not think I am deficient in 
womanly sensibility,” she had said to him, with 
one of those soft glances of the meaning and 
effect of which she was entirely careless and 
unconscious. “ But some women must remain 
spinsters, you know, and I think I am meant to 
be one of the sisterhood.” 

“You do not know yourself. The day will 
come when ambition will seem nothing to you ; 
when the homely things, the real things, will 


A HALT AT DA WAT 


271 


take on their true value to your eyes, and a 
‘ career ’ will seem a mere artificiality that has 
nothing to do with what is best and sweetest 
in life.” 

The words had passed her by as an idle 
phrase, evoked from disappointment. And she 
and Richard Allen had parted, he going to his 
post on the line in Arizona, and she to Italy to 
study. And yet nothing passes from us en- 
tirely. Here, without warning, without her 
intention, the little scene came up before her 
eyes ; and she saw again the apple-orchard in 
blossom, the red brick chimney of the school- 
house across the way looming up in the moon- 
light, the hills in the distance, the strong, 
proudly-carried figure at her side. And then 
scene after scene came up before her, always 
with the two figures present : the manly, de- 
voted lover, the self-absorbed girl. 

Yet she had lived for ambition, and the world 
had been kind to her, after she had proven her 
mettle. She had not lacked lovers, but she had 
never loved. Her strong will, which had de- 


272 SO UTHERN HEA R TS 

terminedly mapped out an existence entirely 
free from sentiment, had carried her through 
every affair triumphantly and untouched. Four 
or five hours ago she had entered that car as 
“ free from the trammels of passion ” as a vestal 
virgin. What was in the air, what was in the 
night, that hurried her on into imaginative 
flights ? Constantly, like two stars, two mean- 
ing eyes seemed to gleam upon her, and kindle 
a world of emotion latent and unsuspected in 
her nature ! She tried to be cynical, to laugh, 
to think of something else; she tried her best 
to get to sleep, but only her will could sleep, 
and fancy still rioted. Richard Allen had had 
the making of a fine man in him : what had 
become of him, — why had nothing been heard 
of him ? The woman whose religion was suc- 
cess had little patience with patience ; it seemed 
to her that all virtue was embodied in some 
sort of action. A man who at forty — he must 
be forty — was still obscure, was not worth a 
thought. And yet he had possessed a certain 
sort of strength. She had been forced to ad-. 


A HALT AT DAWN 


2 73 


mire, in old times, a suggested moral superi- 
ority, a higher point of view than she con- 
sidered practical. If he had brought himself to 
live up to his own standard, he must have been 
unable to make necessary concessions. And 
then, as Margaret recalled some “ concessions ” 
she had herself made to success, she felt her 
cheeks burn in the darkness. How often she 
had traded upon her own attractions, how often 
made use of the influence of her personality to 
bring about certain ends ! If she had not lied 
in words, she had in act. Her present status 
had not been attained without some sacrifice 
of scruples. 

The woman turned restlessly in her berth, 
wondering why such ideas should come to her 
now to interfere with her peace. She was 
good ; she was ashamed of nothing in her past ; 
she was living a high, free, independent life, 
the life for a woman of intellect and energy to 
lead. Thank heaven, she was not an emotional 
creature ! Sentiment had been trained out of 

her. Long after midnight she lost conscious- 
18 


274 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


ness, and passed a few hours in fitful slumber. 
It was cruel that she should have to dream of 
Richard Allen ; dream that they were together 
in an open boat, drifting out to sea, and that 
his arms were around her, his eyes looking into 
hers. And she cared for nothing, thought of 
nothing but that he held her close — how 
strangely sweet it was ! — 

A jar, a shock, a sudden stop, as if the train 
had run against a wall of rock, and Margaret 
started up and drew the curtain aside instinc- 
tively. A fall through space— what was it, oh, 
where was she ! Had the train fallen down an 
embankment ? 

After a minute she realized that she had been 
thrown from her berth across the car, that 
other persons lay about, some groaning, some 
hastily picking themselves up. She shut her 
eyes : there was a sharp pain in her left arm, 
and a weight upon her side. A falling lamp 
had struck her, and from some cause she could 
not rise ; her leg must be broken. There was 
a terrible confusion, much talking, and half-a- 


A HALT AT DAWN 


2 75 

dozen people bending over her pityingly and 
asking her questions. 

“ What has happened ? Is anybody killed ? ” 
she asked. 

Several persons answered at once. They 
had run into a freight. The engineer on their 
own train was killed ; no one else. Many were 
hurt. Could she bear to be moved ? 

“ I must,” she returned, setting her lips, for 
agonizing pains began to shoot through' her 
foot, and the thought of being touched was 
suffering. 

“ Fortunately we are just on the outskirts of 
Frithville — there are houses near.” It was the 
conductor who spoke now, and he at once took 
charge. She was lifted carefully, wrapped in 
blankets and carried out. Their car had sus- 
tained less damage than any other, being in the 
rear, and there was no difficulty in gettingout. 

“ If she could stand it to be taken over yon- 
der,” said some one, pointing to a house some 
distance away, “ she’d be more comfortable, I 
reckon.” 


276 SOUTHERN HEARTS 

“ Where are we ? ” asked Margaret, bravely 
suppressing her pain. 

“ Somewhere in southern Indiana — a little 
town called Frithville,” a man answered her. 

“If she could stand it to be taken over to 
the doctor’s house — ” said the persistent first 
speaker. 

“ I can stand it,” she interposed ; “ take me 
there quickly.” 

They improvised a sort of rough litter of 
mattresses, and carried her across a field in the 
open country. The dawn was just breaking, 
and the pale moon was slowly fading out of 
view before the great coming light. The air 
was clear, cold, crisp ; and, though there had 
evidently been a heavy storm during the night, 
it had cleared completely, and the first ray of 
sunlight glittered upon banks of frozen snow. 
The house before which they stopped was a 
plain, two-storied wooden structure, which 
seemed at first sight peculiarly barren-looking. 
Clean white curtains hung in straight, scant 
folds at the windows. The door had been 


A HAL T AT DA WN 


277 

drab in color, but the paint had been so assidu- 
ously scrubbed that one now took its presence 
on trust. There was a brass knocker and a 
rush door-mat, on which lay a large black cat 
with bristling white whiskers. 

The door was opened by a severe Swedish 
girl, whose starched cap and apron suggested 
careful housekeeping, as her suspicious counte- 
nance suggested inhospitality. She made no 
objections to admitting them, however, and 
Margaret was carefully deposited upon a couch 
in the sitting-room to wait the coming of the 
doctor, who, the maid said, had just left the 
house to go to the scene of the wreck. 

“ We’ll send him back to you, ma’am, right 
off,” one of the men assured her. “ You ought 
to be ’tended to first.” 

“ Not if others are suffering and need him 
more,” said Margaret faintly. 

The ungenial looking Swede proved herself 
to be not deficient in skill, even though sym- 
pathy was in a measure lacking. She made 
her guest as comfortable as she could. The 


278 SO U THE RAT HE A R TS 

shoe was cut from the swollen ankle, which was 
bathed and bandaged, and the hurts upon the 
shoulder and side were pronounced to be only 
bruises which “ Herr doctor would make- 
right.” And then Margaret was left to her- 
self while the girl went to make the inevi- 
table “ cup of tea,” which was to set everything 
straight. 

At first she lay perfectly still, seeing nothing, 
and caring for nothing, her mind full of vexa- 
tion and impatience over an accident which 
must delay the fulfilment of her engagement. 
It did not occur to her that it might have been 
worse ; anything was bad enough. 

After awhile her eyes began to wander idly 
around the room. It seemed half parlor, half 
study. Folding doors divided it from the 
office at the back. There was a book-case, 
well filled ; some good engravings on the walls ; 
a few easy-chairs covered with raw silk of a dull 
hue, much worn ; and a writing-table between 
the windows, half covered with books and 
magazines. There was something agreeable to 


A HAL T AT DA WJV 279 

her taste in the air of the room. She could 
imagine it the abode of a man whose very 
poverty could never become squalid. The 
great open Franklin stove shone brightly, and 
the hearth was scrupulously clean. Upon the 
mantel were a bronze clock and a pair of fine 
vases, dainty in tone and finish ; they were the 
sole womanly touches about the place. Noting 
these details half indifferently, she lay back 
again and closed her eyes. 

When she opened them again, they happened 
to glance directly over to a corner of the room 
which had before been dim, but was now illu- 
minated by a shaft of sunlight. A carved 
bracket hung there, and on the shelf lay a sing- 
ular looking little instrument, shaped like a 
dagger, of Moorish device, the handle inlaid 
with gold, left rough and unpolished. When 
Margaret saw this small object, she gave a little 
cry and tried to rise, but finding that impos- 
sible, she dropped back upon her pillows as if 
she had been shot, her eyes fixed upon the 
little instrument with a look of recognition that 


28 o 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


was half pleasure, half alarm. What strange 
trick was fate about to play her? How could 
this thing be possible ? 

There was a noise : the front door opened, 
and some one came along the hall with a firm, 
measured step. Margaret’s heart, that well- 
regulated organ, beat to suffocation. She hardly 
dared listen or look. She threw her arm up 
over her forehead, nearly concealing her face. 
Some one entered the room and paused beside 
her. A well-remembered voice, graver, deeper 
than of yore, yet with a cheery ring in it, said, 
“ Let me see what I can do to help you, 
madam.” A chair was drawn up to the side 
of the couch, a gentle hand took her own. Her 
pulse was beating furiously ; the hand was held 
rather long, as if something perplexed him. 
She felt searching eyes bent upon her face, and 
suddenly threw down her arm. The doctor 
drew back, his face paling, and the two looked 
at each other for a minute in silence. She spoke 
first, putting out her hand timidly. 

“Richard, don’t you remember me?” 


A HALT AT DAWN 


281 

“ Remember you? As if I were likely ever 
to forget you.” 

She softly touched his empty left sleeve, 
pinned over his breast, two tears standing in 
her eyes. 

“ At Black Gulch,” he said. “ I have got 
over minding it. Don’t grieve.” 

“You left the army ? ” 

“ Yes, four years ago. My health gave way. 
I studied medicine in Indianapolis, was invited 
here by an old friend to become his assistant, 
and shortly afterward he died. That is all.” 

“ You never — never ” 

“Yes; I married.” 

The words were an unexpected stab. Mar- 
garet gasped, amazed that she should care. 
Her face suddenly became suffused with color, 
and she turned it away. 

“ She only lived a year — Margaret,” said the 
doctor, bending down to study the fair, flushed 
face, suddenly pain-smitten. 

“ My ankle ! ” said Margaret faintly, drawing 
his attention to the lesser hurt. 


282 SO UTHERN HEAR TS 

He was the doctor again at once, and, for 
the next half hour all professional gravity, and 
as impersonal as the sphinx; yet the woman 
felt through every nerve, like a musical vibra- 
tion, the thrill of his firm, warm fingers, the 
scrutiny of his eyes. He was changed, worn 
through suffering rather than years, his face 
lined, his hair grown gray ; with nothing young 
about him but his eyes, which sparkled with a 
cheer and brightness no grief could dim, for 
they mirrored a mind above all personal consid- 
erations, concerned with those large, loving 
interests belonging to humanity. 

The woman felt the presence of this spirit, 
as if something beautiful and good had settled 
softly down beside her, and mutely besought 
her attention from herself and her narrow 
world. She struggled against it, yet it was like 
a shaft of genial sun heat, entering suddenly 
some frozen glen ; she felt, in a heart purposely 
hardened against such influences, a stir, a thaw; 
ice was breaking, and the long-stilled waters of 
human affection began to flow in gentle currents, 


A HALT AT DAWN 283 

inspiring a sensation of delight that astonished 
and abashed her. 

The doctor came and went quietly, her eyes 
following him. When he intercepted the look, 
she blushed like a schoolgirl. Too busy all 
that day to give her more than necessary at- 
tention, he yet lost nothing that passed, and 
she had a sense which was oddly pleasant that 
he understood something of what was passing 
in her mind. It was terrible, too. There were 
moments when she wished herself miles away. 
Besides all the physical pain which she endured 
that long day, Margaret’s soul was the battle- 
ground of a struggle far more exhausting. Am- 
bition, pride, and love of the world fought hard 
against a tender, newly-born impulse, which it 
seemed that a single breath of reason ought to 
chill to death. 

The coals burned red in the open stove; a 
little tea-table was set in the middle of the 
room, and in the easiest chair in the house, 
piled with all the available cushions, the doctor 
placed Margaret, taking his position opposite 


284 


SO U THERN HEARTS 


her The solemn Swedish girl brought in 
supper, which was well cooked and served with 
a scrupulous cleanliness that almost atoned for 
the absence of a more dainty service. 

The doctor’s face shone with satisfaction, but 
his manner, although genial, was ceremonious. 
Margaret felt that, in the few feet intervening 
between them, there lay years of care and grief 
and disappointment. She felt a yearning to 
bridge the chasm, to draw nearer to him, even 
though she herself had to take the hard steps 
toward understanding. 

Thought the woman : “ Does he love me 
still ? ” And thought the man : “ Is she tired 
of the world, and could she learn to love me 
now ? ” 

But they spoke of music ; of camp-life on the 
western frontier ; of what they had seen, what 
they had read. Not a word of what they felt. 
A few hours later the doctor stood in his bare 
little soldier’s bedroom, and looked in his 
glass. For five minutes he studied himself, and 
then he turned away, resolved to let no new 


A HALT AT DAWN 


285 

hope spring up in his heart. But Margaret 
slept to dream of him, woke through the night 
thinking of him, as she could not have thought 
in the old days, when he wooed her in the con- 
fidence of his fresh, hopeful youth. 

There was no hotel in the village, and the 
few scattered houses were crowded with the 
wounded passengers, lying over till well eno*ugh 
to proceed with their journey. Margaret was 
not sorry that there was no other place for her 
than the refuge she had been taken to. “ I am 
thinking that I am singularly fortunate in being 
in the doctor’s house, where I get special atten- 
tion,” she said to him, with a little fluttering 
smile. 

In time these shy looks wrought upon the 
doctor, and his stern resolution wavered. He 
found himself sounding her preferences and 
attachments, with the unconfessed design of ex- 
tracting some unguarded word that might in- 
dicate a change in her old convictions. Carry- 
ing on together these two processes — deter- 
mination to refrain and resolution to pursue, 


286 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


which often accompanies some course of action 
embraced in accordance with a natural, un- 
worldly judgment, he managed to betray to 
the eager girl all he wished to conceal and she 
wished to know. She had telegraphed to Bal- 
timore that she would be there in ten days. 
Four of them had passed, and she was free from 
pafn and able to put her foot to the ground. 
The doctor persisted in helping her from her 
couch to the chair and back again. 

“ But I can walk alone now,” she objected. 

“ We must be careful. Not until to-morrow.” 
She protested with greater earnestness. “ True 
— I have but one arm,” he said, with the first 
accent of bitterness she had heard from him. 
Her lips parted to give utterance to a sudden 
rush of words, but she only looked at him, with 
eyes so eloquent that he answered the look. 

“ Margaret, do you care ? Dear, I have al- 
ways loved you, I love you now, — can you 
care r 

She drooped her head on his shoulder, but 
said nothing. The doctor held her close for a 


A HALT AT DAWN 287 

minute, and then, leaving her, began to walk 
up and down the room. 

“ It is impossible ! ” 

“ It may be impossible,” murmured Margaret 
with a little blush, “ but — it is true.” 

“ It is cruel of me to ask it, dear. You are 
young, beautiful, brilliant — with success at your 
feet, and I ” 

She put up her hand imploringly. It was 
caught and held. “ And I am poor, obscure 
and — old,” he finished, his eyes upon her 
face. 

“ I have come to you, Richard. It seemed 
strange to me. I cannot explain it, but it 
seems as if everything the world has to offer 
me is nothing beside ” 

“ Beside my love ? ” he bent on one knee be- 
side her chair and put her hand to his lips. 

“ I want to share your life,” she said, and a 
new expression grew upon her face, a high, de- 
voted look which was half heroic, all womanly. 
“ I want to learn something of the great things, 
the true things.” 


2 88 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


“ You have had greater things than I 
can give you. Think of all you are leav- 
ing ! ” 

She made a gesture of renunciation. “ It 
does not seem much to leave — for you.” 

“ Ah, my darling, I am afraid you will regret 
it. The work-a-day world will be a trial to 
you. And mine is a veritable work-a-day 
world.” 

He kept his eyes on her face, half dreading 
to see her shrink away. But what woman is 
not won by an appearance of self-renunciation ? 
Richard could not have let her go now ; at the 
last instant he would have snatched her to his 
breast, had she drawn away. But the misgiv- 
ing that rushed over him so fiercely was a real 
one, a sensible one ; he felt it profoundly, and 
tried to read in her eyes a shadow of this coming 
regret. But her eyes were clear, loving, radiant. 
She pressed herself against his breast, and gave 
him the great gift of her life and her future. 
Would the shadow ever come? 

The moon looked softly in, an hour later, and 


A HAL T AT DA WN 289 

finding the lovers in that delicious dream which 
once in a lifetime comes to most men and 
women, drew over her face a gray cloud-veil 
and left them to dream on. 
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PINK AND BLACK 










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PINK AND BLACK 1 


ONE bright day in early spring, when the 
children had begun to hunt in the woods for 
trailing arbutus, and the Shenandoah River re- 
flected in its clear depths the outlines of the 
overlooking mountains, a small, straight figure, 
sensibly habited in a short gray gown, made its 
way along the single paved street of Bloomdale 
to the principal store. 

Young Heaton Smith, the handsome, blue- 
eyed son of the proprietor, came forward with 
a smiling welcome. After a few minutes' pre- 
liminary talk, Miss Phillida confessed that she 
had some notion of buying a dress. 

He placed a stool in front of the counter ex- 
tending along that side of the store which was 
devoted to dry goods, and, with the air of one 
1 Copyright, 1899, by “ The Housewife.” 

2 93 


294 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


who affords a pleasant surprise, laid before her 
several rolls of sheer, silky stuff in dainty color- 
ings ; the most conspicuous being that which 
bore bunches of deep pink rosebuds on a light 
brown ground. 

“ Beautiful ! ” murmured Miss Phillida, taking 
hold of the edge with a delicate, blue-veined 
hand covered with a network of fine wrinkles. 
“ How Sister Emma would love this pat- 
tern ! ” 

“ Here’s a blue,” said Heaton, laying another 
before her. “ Handsome, aren’t they? They 
come ten yards to a piece; just enough for a 
dress. We only got ’em in yesterday.” 

“ I am mightily taken with this pink, Heaton. 
But I reckon it’s too young-looking for me.” 

“ You don’t think yourself old, ma’am ? 
Mother was saying, only the other day, that 
none of the girls could beat you for complex- 
ion.” 

“ Just hear the boy ! If it was Sister Emma, 
you might talk so. I do agree with anybody 
that calls her a beauty. But I reckon you 


PINK AND BLACK 


295 

don’t recollect Sister Emma, Heaton ? You 
was a child when she went away.” 

“ I recollect her, though. It’s about ten 
years now, ain’t it ? I was twelve then. I 
know I haven’t forgot that big wedding-cake 
with the twelve dozen eggs in it.” 

“ Really, Heaton?” said Miss Phillida, color- 
ing with pleasure. “ I was rather proud of 
that cake. Emma could make nice cake her- 
self. I suppose she’s had a chance to forget it. 
Her time’s taken up other ways. Denver’s 
quite a gay place, she says ; and of course her 
husband’s position requires her to go out a 
great deal.” 

This was uttered in a tone of proud satisfac- 
tion. Everybody in Bloomdale knew what a 
comfort it was to the solitary woman to talk 
about her sister. The Virginia beauty had 
married a western millionaire, and when at the 
monthly sewing society Miss Phillida read aloud 
her last Denver letter, these staid, but pleasure- 
loving Virginia matrons listened eagerly. 

Young Heaton leaned back against the 


296 SOUTHERN HEARTS 

shelves in an easy, conversational attitude, and 
looked politely interested. 

“ Of course you know she’s coming home to 
make a visit, Heaton?” The little lady’s joy 
and yearning brimmed over her mild blue eyes, 
and she lowered her head, pretending to ex- 
amine the goods. 

“ So I heard,” said Heaton cordially. “ We’ll 
all enjoy seeing her, I’m shore.” 

“ I expect her to-morrow,” Miss Phillida cried 
excitedly. “ By the morning train.” 

A vehicle drew up before the long porch, 
and the little woman endeavored to seem oc- 
cupied with her purchase. 

“ I reckon this black and white’d be more 
appropriate to my years,” she said in a critical 
tone. “ But somehow I’m awfully in the notion 
of taking that pink.” 

“Take the pink, Miss Phillidy ; and if you 
change your mind, we’ll take it back and give 
you another in the place of it.” 

Miss Phillida cast another glance at the black 
and white, then turned again to the pink. 


PINK AND BLACK 


2 97 

“ I’ll take it then, Heaton. I feel somehow 
as if it’d please Emma to have me get a gown 
that looked cheerful. And I must be getting 
young again, for I haven’t been so in the notion 
of dressing up for ages. But, dear me ! if I 
haven’t forgot to ask the price! Maybe it’s 
beyond my reach.” 

“No, indeed, Miss Phillidy, it’s a bargain. 
Five dollars for any pattern. A chance we 
mayn’t be able to offer our customers again.” 

It was a considerable sum for Miss Phillida 
to give for a spring dress. She was deep in 
calculations when a handsome ruddy man of 
about forty-five entered the store, and greeted 
her with delightful heartiness. 

He called her “ Cousin Phillidy,” and the 
cousinship, although very distant, enabled him 
to do the little woman many a good turn. In 
his heart, Mr. Ned Miller always looked upon 
her as the woman who might, but for a chance, 
have been his sister-in-law. The chance had 
been Emma Wood’s marriage with another 
man. But that was not his fault. Bloomdale 


2 g8 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

said that Ned Miller was of too affectionate a 
nature to stay a widower. 

As she reflected his sunshiny smile and an- 
swered his gay badinage, a strange idea sud- 
denly entered Miss Phillida’s head. It made 
her get up in great haste. 

“ I — I’ll take the pink, Heaton,” she said 
quickly. “ I’ll carry it right with me.” 

“ My horses air at the door, cousin. Let me 
drive you up the street.” 

“ It’s but a step ; I’m obliged to you, Cousin 
Ned. And it’s such a sweet day, I like to 
walk.” 

“Well, I’ll see you at preaching Sunday, 
cousin. And your sister, too, I hope. But if 
I’m in town before, I’ll just call in — to see if I 
can be of any service.” 

“ Thank you,” murmured Miss Phillida. 
“ Give my love to all at Maplegrove,” and she 
hastened homeward, amazed at herself, and in- 
clined to believe that the Father of Evil had 
put that startling notion into her head. 

She stopped at the gate of a low, brown 


PINK AND BLACK 


2 99 

house opposite the Methodist Church, and, 
going through a garden crowded with sweet, 
old-fashioned flowers, opened the side door 
into a little entry about six feet square, from 
which one door on the left led to the sitting- 
room, and another on the right into a spare 
bedroom. The kitchen lay beyond the sitting 
room, and thither Miss Phillida directed her 
steps. A cup of tea, taken upon the spotless 
pine table, brought her back to herself. She 
had spread out the dress pattern over the back 
of the settee, to look at while she ate her 
dinner; and after washing up the dishes, she 
opened a door leading into a chilly bedroom, 
all dark, rich old mahogany and white draperies, 
and carefully laid it away in the lower drawer 
of a capacious bureau. 

“ I reckon it was extravagant of me,” she 
soliloquized. . “ But I couldn’t shame Emma 
by appearing out in company with her in old 
duds.” 

Emma arrived the next morning. Bloom- 
dale was looking for her when the train 


3 °° 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


stopped at the dilapidated old shed called a 
“ deep-ho.” At first Bloomdale thought itself 
disappointed. It had expected a brilliant 
young lady accompanied by a quantity of bag- 
gage, exhibiting, perhaps, some of the haughti- 
ness of a person used to the homage paid to 
rank and wealth. Instead, there was left upon 
the platform, besides a small, plain trunk, a tall 
woman dressed all in black, her face covered 
with a heavy veil. She advanced hesitatingly. 
Miss Phillida, straining her eyes to see through 
that veil, suddenly pressed forward and fell into 
her arms. 

“ It’s you, sister ! I know you by your walk. 
Come and get into the carryall, there’s room 
for the trunk at the back.” 

Bewildered, but energetic, she steered her 
sister past the little crowd and landed her 
safely in the old carryall, upon the back of 
which a strapping negro was already adjusting 
the trunk. Miss Phillida recognized him as 
the coachman of Mr. Ned Miller, and the tears 
came to her eyes as he handed her the reins. 


PINK AND BLACK 


301 


To her excited sense, it seemed significant that 
the first person to show kindness to Emma on 
her home-coming should be some one belong- 
ing to her old lover. 

She talked without knowing what she said. 
So far, Emma had not spoken, after the first 
low murmur of greeting. Emma! — the gay, 
sparkling girl whose high spirits and talent for 
conversation had made her a favorite in county 
society. For whom could she be in mourning? 
Miss Phillida racked her brain with conjectures. 

When they were inside the house Emma 
lifted her veil, gazing around like one who had 
just returned to life from a long trance. Her 
face, whose beauty was of a grand type, soft- 
ened and brightened from its look of stern re- 
pose, as one by one she recognized objects 
once loved and familiar. 

“ Everything is just the same,” she said in a 
low voice, vibrant with feeling. “ Grandfather’s 
and father’s swords there on the wall, the fox- 
skin rugs, the horsehair armchairs, and the dear 
old brass andirons! — How good of you to have 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


3 02 

a fire, Phillida, dear ! It looks so cheerful. I 
haven’t seen a wood fire on the hearth since I 
left home.” 

“You mean home in Denver?” palpitated 
Miss Phillida, feeling strangely awed by this 
sister with grave manner and pale face. 

“No!” The denial was quick and passion- 
ate, more like the fervor of the old Emma. 
She threw off her bonnet and cloak with rapid 
movements, and held out her arms to little Miss 
Phillida. In a moment all constraint had 
melted away between the long-severed sisters. 
The tongue of the elder was loosened, and she 
asked question after question, which, however, 
Emma parried. 

“I have a long story to tell you, dear; but 
let us wait till evening. When the curtains are 
drawn and the lamps lit, I shall feel better able 
to talk. Let me just enjoy being at home, for 
a little while.” 

She followed Miss Phillida out to the kitchen 
and, sitting on a low chair with the big black 
cat purring in her lap, watched her fry the 


PINK AND BLACK 


3°3 

chicken and bake the corn cakes for dinner, 
talking meanwhile, fluently and entertainingly, 
of life in the West, and of the different cities 
she had visited. But not a word of herself. 

When dinner was over, she insisted upon 
wiping the dishes ; and it was then that Miss 
Phillida scrutinized her dress, and saw that it 
was rusty, and not of fine material. 

“ Oh, just a traveling dress,” thought the 
elder sister, who experienced an odd fluttering 
of the heart. 

The afternoon was consumed in examining 
the house and garden. Miss Phillida raised her 
own vegetables, and kept a few chickens, which 
latter amused themselves by scratching up her 
seeds and pecking her choicest tomatoes as they 
ripened. A creek watered the lower end of the 
garden, and here a half-dozen ducks disported 
lazily. Under a spreading apple tree was a 
bench covered with an old buffalo robe, upon 
which she sat with her sewing on summer after- 
noons. Surrounded thus by comfort and peace, 
the gentle spinster had lived her harmless ex- 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


3°4 

istence, conscious of but one ungratified wish : 
the longing for her sister. And now that wish 
was accomplished. With tremors of delight she 
displayed everything, confiding all her little 
plans to affectionate, sympathetic ears. Each 
homely detail gave Emma fresh pleasure. She 
seemed to desire to penetrate to the heart of 
this simple home life ; to attach herself to it, 
like one who thirsted for an intimacy with 
something genuine and natural. 

Miss Phillida saw with pleasure that clouds 
were gathering, and that darkness would come 
on earlier than usual. Emma became grave 
again after supper ; and when she seated herself 
in the big rocking-chair before the hearth in 
the sitting-room, the firelight played over fea- 
tures that wore an expression of noble sad- 
ness. 

“ It is three years since I left Denver,” she 
said, turning her luminous gray eyes upon her 
sister’s bewildered countenance. “ I sent my 
letters to a friend there who mailed them 
to you. It was not necessary for you to be 


PINK AND BLACK 


305 


harassed by a knowledge of my sufferings. You 
fancied I was living a happy, care-free life with 
a rich and generous husband. Heavens ! — How 
unsophisticated we are, we country folks in 
Virginia ! 

“ I can’t make it all plain to you, Phillida, 
for you wouldn’t understand without having 
gone through it, how, little by little, I learned 
the ways of society, and on what a base foun- 
dation the wealth we enjoyed was built. Rob- 
ert was a speculator, and a reckless, unscrupu- 
lous one. And besides this he was not honest 
in small things. The husband I had imagined 
a fairy prince, full of noble qualities, was not 
only false but mean. He gave me whatever 
was necessary to make a show ; nothing for my 
pleasure. Poor little sister ! Don’t you sup- 
pose I wanted to send you presents ? I never 
had a dollar of my own all those seven years. 
But finally the end came. Robert failed — and 
it was a dishonorable failure. He went away 
in the night, leaving me to bear the brunt of 

everything.” 

2Q 


SO UTHEKN HE A R TS 


3°6 

“ Oh, oh ! ” breathed Miss Phillida. “ And 
didn’t he come back ? ” 

“ He wrote me a letter from Canada, telling 
me to come over to him, for he was sick. Well, 
I went ! I nursed him, and worked for him, — 
and I put up for two years with a life that was 
Purgatory. You mustn’t expect me to be very 
sorry he died then, Phillida. You wouldn’t if 
you knew all. I did hate to come back to 
you, — such a failure ! But it was a miserable 
existence all alone there, in Quebec, and — 1 
knew you would be glad to see me, dear! ” 

For a few moments the sisters wept together. 
Then Emma raised her head. 

“ I thought that perhaps I might get a 
school. Of course I intend to do something.” 

“ No, no ! ” cried Miss Phillida, wiping her 
eyes and taking her sister’s hand. “You 
needn’t do that, dearest. With the garden and 
the cow and chickens, there is plenty. And 
then, you know, the hundred a year that comes 
from the railroad shares is as much yours as 
mine. Everything is yours, and, thank heaven, 


PINK AND BLACK 


307 

you’re at home now, where everybody’ll be 
good to you ! ” 

“ The same generous, self-sacrificing little 
soul ! But, dear Phillida, I must work, if only 
to keep myself happy. I should soon be mis- 
erable and restless with nothing to do. Come, 
make up your mind to let me be a help instead 
of a burden. I have set my heart upon the 
school. Tell me, who are the trustees now?” 

“ Cousin Ned Miller’s a trustee,” replied Miss 
Phillida, who had grown thoughtful. “ Per- 
haps you’re right, Emma. Maybe you’ll be 
happier with the children to think about. And 
he’ll get you a school, I’m quite sure.” 

Emma rocked softly back and forth, looking 
into the fire. Perhaps she saw visions there of 
a new and happier life, for her face took on an 
expression of content. 

But some little personal worry preyed upon 
Miss Phillida’s mind. She said nothing about 
it, but one morning when Emma had gone for 
a drive with one of the neighbors, she took 
from the bureau drawer the precious parcel re- 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


3°8 

posing there, and with an air of guilt made her 
way to the store. 

“ I’ve brought back-this dress,” she said con- 
fidentially to Heaton. “ And if you’ll be so kind 
as to change it, I’ll take the black and white 
piece. I feel it’s more suitable, somehow.” 

He readily obliged her, and the new pattern 
was deposited in the deep drawer, after which 
the little woman wore an air of chastened 
cheerfulness. 

Cousin Ned Miller justified Miss Phillida’s 
confidence. He not only promised Emma the 
school, but offered to get a class in French for 
her ; and he spent time running about, waiting 
on her, and cheering her in every way that 
could suggest itself to his kind heart. His 
handsome team stood almost every day before 
the little brown house, while he loitered on the 
honeysuckle scented porch with the sisters. 
There was always some plausible excuse for his 
coming, and the true meaning of his visits did 
not dawn upon Miss Phillida’s mind until one 
afternoon when she suddenly entered the 


PINK AND BLACK 


3°9 

sitting-room and saw them on the sofa to- 
gether. 

The little woman’s face was aflame with joy- 
ous excitement, as she ran into the kitchen and 
began moving things about, without knowing 
or caring what she did. The happiest out- 
come! — the most natural, the most comfort- 
able, and most reasonable arrangement that 
could happen ! Emma and Cousin Ned ! 
They were made for each other. 

“ I really can’t keep still,” thought Miss 
Phillida. “ I must go somewhere.” 

As she put on her old gray gown, a thought 
suddenly flashed into her mind. “ Maybe it’ll 
look curious,” she reflected. “ But I declare if 
I won’t.” 

Once more she entered the store with a par- 
cel under her cape. Fortunately the accommo- 
dating clerk was the only one around. 

Miss Phillida blushed as she laid the black 
and white dress pattern on the counter. 

“ I’m ashamed to be so changeable, Heaton, 
indeed I am ; but things have altered lately, and 


3io 


SO UTHE R IV HEAR TS 


— my mind’s more given to bright colors, some- 
how. So, if it won't inconvenience you any, 
and if you’d really just as lief — I think I’ll 
change back to the pink.” 


MRS. MAY’S PRIVATE INCOME 











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MRS. MAY’S PRIVATE INCOME. 1 


When Laura McHenry quietly turned her 
back upon the wealthy and desirable suitor her 
family had decided she should marry, and gave 
her hand to William May, a middle-aged lawyer 
of no particular standing or prospects, every- 
body decided that she had thrown herself 
away. 

Mr. May began his married life upon a wind- 
fall of fifteen hundred dollars, his largest fee in 
a dozen years. A pretty house in Richmond was 
leased for a year, and the delightful experience 
of buying new furniture and disposing it to the 
best advantage gave the young wife such happy 
occupation for the first two months that she 
was always in a sunny humor, full of brightness 
and variability, and that kind of independent 
submissiveness which charms a man who likes 


Copyright, 1899, by S. H. Moore & Co. 

313 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


3*4 

to see a woman much occupied with household 
affairs, and with himself, as the center of the 
household. Her pretty show of activity amused 
him. He said she made occupation for herself 
in moving the furniture from one place to an- 
other and then back again. One of his jokes 
was to ask her where he should find the bed 
when he came home. And upon this she would 
pretend to pout, and then they would kiss each 
other without the least awkwardness or shame- 
facedness, and he would go off to his work 
with a pleasant sense of security in the devotion 
of his lovely wife, while she would carry in her 
mind all day long the picture of his smiling 
face, and love him for every pretty speech and 
admiring look. 

They were really happy. And it lasted quite 
six months, till all the fifteen hundred dollars 
had been drawn out of the bank, except the 
bare moiety necessary to keep the account. 

When Dinah’s wages were a month over- 
due, her substantial presence disappeared out 
of the kitchen, and Laura’s dainty white hands 


MRS MA Y'S PRIVA TE INCOME 


3 T 5 

made acquaintance with dish-mops, stove- 
lifters and brooms. Such an ignoramus as she 
found herself ! And with what zeal she bent 
her mind to the study of cookery books and 
the household corners of the newspapers. And 
brains told. She left the flour out of her first 
cake, but her second one was a triumph of art, 
and muffins, veal cutlets and custards came out 
from under her clever fingers with a delicacy 
and deftness that surprised herself and gratified 
May immensely. Although he was sorry to 
have her work in the kitchen, and sorry to find 
her now too tired to sing to him in the even- 
ings with the same spirit and freshness that 
used to breathe through her songs. But the 
worst thing was that fatigue and unending at- 
tention to details, united to those perpetual 
interruptions from the door-bell which drive 
busy women almost distracted, had their effect 
upon Laura’s delicate frame. She grew “ nerv- 
ous,” which is often a misnomer for com- 
bined worry and distasteful labors. It will 
seem to the inexperienced that the housekeep- 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


316 

ing for two people, in a convenient little house, 
should have been a mere bagatelle to a clever 
woman. Perhaps it would have been if Laura 
had not had her profession to learn as well as 
practise. She had not been brought up to 
housework, but to sing. Music had always 
been so much a part of her life that she no 
more thought of giving up her daily study 
hours than she would have thought of giving 
up her William. It was not that she chose to 
work at her piano three or four hours a day 
after her morning housework was done, but 
that it simply did not occur to her to do other- 
wise. She usually forgot or neglected to take 
any lunch, and by dinner time had no appetite, 
which had its conveniences, for it was rapidly 
coming to pass that the dinners she could com- 
pass upon the scanty . and irregular supplies 
of money she received were scarcely suffi- 
cient for more than one person, and she con- 
trived that her husband should be that 
person. 

She had a thousand devices for inducing him 


MRS. MA Y'S PRIVA TE INCOME 


317 


to eat the bit of steak, the single cup-custard, 
or the slice of fish. He was far from realizing 
that his delicately fair wife, with her dainty 
tastes, was illy nourished upon the tea and 
toast to which she often confined herself. Nor 
did Laura realize it. 

But after all, it was not the housework, the 
scanty food, nor even the lack of variety and 
refreshment in her life that was beginning to 
tell heavily upon her health, that was spoiling 
her beautiful disposition and making her ap- 
prehensive and irritable. It was something 
more terrible to a loving woman, honoring and 
admiring her husband with all her soul, than 
all these things combined. 

The third anniversary of their wedding-day 
came. Laura remembered what day it was as 
she opened her eyes in the early dawn. A 
sigh escaped her before she knew it. The 
tendency to meditate, as Nathaniel Hawthorne 
observed, makes a woman sad. Laura had 
always been thoughtful ; lately — being much 
alone and having some matters to think about 


3 1 8 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

not tending to raise her spirits, she had insen- 
sibly become sober. 

She put her feet out of bed into a pair of 
worn slippers, and shaking down a heavy mass 
of dark brown hair that matched her eyes in 
color, made her toilet without waking her 
husband, who slumbered serenely till within ten 
minutes of the breakfast hour, when she called 
him, meeting with a not overgracious response. 

The little dining-room had a pleasant and 
comfortable air this chilly September morning. 
The little round table bore a glass containing a 
sprig or two of red geranium from the pot in 
the window, and the coffee-urn of nickel was 
polished till it shone like silver. 

Mr. May came in after keeping her waiting 
fifteen minutes, and after helping her and him- 
self to oatmeal, began to read the newspaper 
that lay at his plate in apparent forgetfulness 
of everything else. He was a stout, rather 
short man, with large, luminous brown eyes 
that never seemed to be looking at anything in 
particular. A full beard and mustache sprin- 


MRS. A/A Y'S PRIVA TE INCOME 


3 T 9 

kled with gray hid a mouth that in his youth 
had made the lower part of his face strongly 
resemble that of Peter the Great. There was 
some quality about him that caused one to 
dread arousing his anger ; a strong sense of his 
own importance, perhaps. Some persons have 
the gift of reflecting their own egotism into 
the minds of others, rendering themselves 
formidable entirely through an appeal to the 
imagination. 

Laura was a tall, gracefully-formed woman, 
with a presence that promised to become ma- 
jestic with increasing years. Yet at heart she 
was timid and sensitive as a delicate child, need- 
ing affection and encouragement in the same 
measure ; the last woman in the world for a 
man who lived entirely within himself, and to 
whom a wife was an adjunct, to be put on and 
off at his pleasure. Yet May had in regard to 
her — and in regard to all other things — a con- 
science void of offense. He took credit to 
himself for having given her her heart’s desire 
in his love, 


320 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


The door-bell jangled sharply. May looked 

up. 

“ If that is the landlord,” he said impres- 
sively, “ I don’t want to see him.” 

“ What shall I tell him ? ” asked Laura. 

“ Tell him anything you please ! ” The tone 
was sternly impatient this time. 

She went slowly into the narrow hall, and 
after a momentary parley with some one who 
spoke in a high, angry voice, returned with a 
bill which she laid before him without a word. 

“Tell him I will— attend to it.” 

“ He says ” she murmured deprecatingly, 

but got no further; the lowering expression 
that came over his face was too lacerating to 
her feelings. She preferred confronting the 
irate butcher again. 

But there was a lump in her throat as she 
quietly resumed her seat. One of her ideas of 
the “ protection ” promised by the marriage 
ceremony had been a shielding from the rough- 
ness of persons of this sort. Why did he ask 
her to 3tand between him and the landlord, the 


MRS. MA Y'S PRIVA TE INCOME 


321 


coal man and the butcher? Why, oh, why, 
was there any necessity for these evasions and 
subterfuges? She looked at her husband as 
he arose at last, after a leisurely breakfast hour, 
and stood by the window finishing a paragraph 
in his paper. He was a strong, robust man in 
the prime of life, with a profession and hosts 
of acquaintances to help on his interests. 
Why could he not at least make the small 
income necessary to keep their very modest 
establishment going? 

The explanation lay in a single fact. May 
was a man of visionary schemes, always chasing 
some will-o’-the-wisp which promised fortune 
and distinction, finding his pleasure in holding 
honorary posts at his political club, which gave 
him a chance to talk and repaid him in a 
cheaply gained reputation for ability. 

Little by little Laura’s idealized vision of 
her husband had faded before the pressure of 
facts. But she clung to the shreds of her faith 
as women do hold to their illusions ; as they 

must if the world is to go on and homes con- 

21 


SOUTHERN HEAR TS 


322 

tinue to exist. There was something still for 
her to learn, however, and not the easiest les- 
son that had been set for her. 

She set rather indifferently about her practis- 
ing that afternoon. It seemed to be no matter 
whether Chopin or Mendelssohn spoke to her 
soul ; both were alike rendered with a cold 
brilliancy very far removed from her usual 
sympathetic interpretation. Her thoughts 
were far away, wandering amid scenes of her 
girlhood ; a happy time, full of social enjoy- 
ment, of affectionate family intercourse, of 
freedom from care, from make-shifts, from the 
dishonor of debt ; a dishonor that bore lightly 
upon May, with his belief in the future, but 
that was crushing to her sensitive nature. Idly 
her fingers wandered, swifter her thoughts flew, 
till all at once a sentence of homely wisdom 
from a modern novelist came into her mind : 
“ Many women are struggling under the burden 
of money-saving when they had far rather 
spend their energies in money-getting.” 

She arose impetuously, her eyes suddenly 


MRS. MA Y’S PR1VA TE INCOME 


323 


full of light. What had she been thinking of? 
There was a fund of unused wealth in her fine 
musical education, in her beautiful voice, a 
little impaired by hardships, but magnificent 
still. Here was the way out of all this mirage 
of poverty; with what she could earn by tak- 
ing a class in Madame Cable’s school combined 
with her husband’s earnings, they could live 
with comparative ease and comfort. Oh, 
happiness, oh, relief ! Laura’s hat and cape 
were on in ten minutes and a car was taking 
her down-town to the dwelling of her old 
teacher, sure of a welcome and of aid. Madame 
had offered her this position five years ago, 
just after her graduation, but her mother would 
not hear of it. Now her mother was two 
thousand miles away, on a frontier post with 
Major McHenry, entirely ignorant of the state 
of affairs in her daughter’s household. 

What a curiously elusive thing courage is ! 
By the time Laura’s finger was on the bell at 
Madame’s door, her breath was coming in 
gasps, and while she waited in the lofty and 


324 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


handsomely furnished parlor for the coming 
of her old teacher, all the strength went out 
of her knees, so that she found it difficult to 
rise when that stately, self-possessed woman 
came in with a little silken rustle of skirts and 
extended hand. 

It is so hard to say outright to a friend, 
“ Help me ! ” And yet, is not the opportunity 
of giving help and comfort one of the rewards 
of a successful life? Why do we distrust 
human goodness ? It was the pride in Laura’s 
nature that made her talk of everything else 
rather than the object of her call, that made 
her tongue falter and her cheek grow paler, 
when at length she brought herself to her task. 

But fate was not ill-disposed. It happened 
that Madame needed her services. She had 
come at an opportune moment, and in a few 
minutes the business was satisfactorily settled. 

“ At the same time, my dear,” said Madame, 
folding her soft, fat hands and shaking her 
head till the emerald drops in her ears emitted 
flashes of green fire, “ I must say that I never 


MRS. MA V*S PR IV A TE INCOME 


325 

like to see a married woman set out to earn 
money. It is apt to spoil her husband. A 
man should support his wife. It is his duty 
and it ought to be his pleasure. And another 
side of the matter is that women to whom the 
extra income they can gain by their talents 
means luxury and possibly extravagance, forget 
that such competition makes it harder for their 
needy sisters. Money-making is not such a 
gracious task. It should be left to those who 
really need the money.” 

“ I am not going to tell you I need it,” 
thought Laura. Aloud, she said with much 
indifference : 

“ Madame, have you any one in your mind 
you would rather get to take your classes — 
any one you think would do the work better ? ” 

“ No,” the teacher acknowledged that she 
knew no other superior to her old pupil. 
“ To tell you the truth, if I did I should feel 
it a duty to engage the better worker. The 
principal of a school like this cannot let her 
feelings guide her, you know.” 


326 so UTHERN HE A R TS 

“ Then as the advantage is mutual,” said 
Laura, a smile breaking over her serious face, 
“ my conscience is at rest. It is a matter of 
the success of the fittest. My needier sister 
is not so well prepared for the post as I, and 
so I get it.” 

“ Really, you are right, ’ murmured Madame, 
with her head on one side. “ But,” she added 
as her visitor rose, “ take my advice about one 
thing : keep your earnings for yourself ; they 
belong to you. Don’t let your husband find 
out that there is a — another capable bread- 
winner in the house.” 

Madame had not the highest opinion in the 
world of Mr. William May. But who lays to 
heart words of selfish caution ? Not the wife 
who in the glow of comfort and peace arising 
from the prospect of an income of her own, 
feels all the old confidence and affection return 
as she explains matters to her husband with a 
careful avoidance of any wound to his self- 
love, and a blissful dwelling upon the pleasure 
and advantage that is to come to herself 


MRS. MA Y’S PRIVATE INCOME 


327 

in the healthful exercise of her accomplish- 
ments. 

May was a little afraid their social standing 
would suffer. He certainly did not like the 
idea of his wife teaching in a school. It was 
contrary to all his preconceptions of her do- 
mestic, home-loving disposition. 

“ It is a reflection upon me,” he said moodily, 
adding with a little passionate movement that 
brought her within his arm, her cheek close to 
his lips : “ I didn’t marry you to let you work, 
my darling ! ” 

She might have answered that he had let 
her work at harder things, but she did not. 
She dwelt upon the idea of the comfort a 
regular occupation was to be to her during the 
long winter days. She would be much hap- 
pier and less lonely with something to do. 
Very little said she of the salary that was an 
item of so much importance in her mind. 

But after he had gone out to his club she 
got out a little blank book and figured it all 
away for six months to come. She resolved 


328 SOUTHERN HEARTS 

to leave out of consideration the house-rent 
and the table. Naturally, William would con- 
tinue to bear the burden of these responsi- 
bilities. Her design was to fill in the vacancies 
which he was indifferent to. So much for the 
gas bill, so much for laundry, so much for the 
seats in church. And something over for the 
indispensable winter clothing and for the joy 
of giving. She looked forward to the hap- 
piness of hanging a new hat upon the rack in 
place of dear Will’s shabby one, and of supply- 
ing a pair of slippers. Bliss and comfort of a 
little control over circumstances, instead of 
being compelled to stand helpless and anxious 
waiting upon the good fortune of another ! 
Could a man have any idea of what this feeling 
is to a woman ? Mr. May could not have had, 
or he would never have done what he did. 

All that first month Laura was buoyed up 
by the anticipation of that comfortable check 
she was soon to finger. Cool autumn breezes 
were beginning to blow, but when first one 
woman, then another, put on wraps, until her 


MRS. MA Y'S PRIVA TE INCOME 


3 2 9 

plain undraped gown appeared odd, she merely 
smiled indifferently and warmed herself with 
the thought of pay-day. When the farina 
kettle sprang a leak she laughingly declared 
it was old enough to be superannuated. A 
dollar seemed such a trifle to worry over 
now. 

At last it was in her hands. The first earn- 
ing of her life. With a child’s glee she hur- 
ried home and displayed it to her husband, 
enjoying his teasing comments on her sudden 
accession to wealth. But the dinner had to be 
cooked, and recalling herself to this duty, she 
ran into the kitchen, leaving the check behind 
her on the desk. 

“ It is all right,” said Mr. May, when she 
looked for it later in the evening. “ I put it 
in my private drawer.” 

“ Oh, yes, it is safer there,” she returned 
easily, and got out her mending basket, hum- 
ming a gay tune, more light of heart than she 
had been in many a day. 

The next day was Saturday, and she had 


33 ° 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


more morning work to do than usual, but she 
hurried through it, and by half-past ten she 
had her hat and gloves on and was rummaging 
the desk for her check. It was nowhere to be 
found. 

“ Impossible that it could have been stolen,” 
she exclaimed. “Impossible! It was not in- 
dorsed. No one could use it, even if a thief 
had made his way in, and that is absurd to 
think of. It must be here.” 

Only when every paper had been taken out 
and scrutinized did she desist from her search, 
and almost crying with vexation, resigned her- 
self to await her husband’s return and ask his 
advice. 

“ My check ! ” she cried breathlessly, almost 
before he was fairly inside the door. “ It is 
gone ! ” 

He turned with a somewhat puzzled ex- 
pression at her excited manner. 

“ The check ? Oh, why, that is all right. I 
put it in the bank this morning.” 

“You put it in the bank? ” repeated Laura 


MRS. MA Y'S PRIVA TE INCOME 


331 


slowly. “ But how could you ? It was not 
indorsed.” 

“ I indorsed it,” he answered rather shortly, 
annoyed at all this explanation about a mere 
matter of course. Were not he and his wife 
one, and was not everything in common be- 
tween them ? It had not entered his head for 
a single instant that there was anything amiss 
about a procedure that was to Laura a veri- 
table thunderbolt. 

She stood for a moment with her eyes low- 
ered, ashamed for him who thought of nothing 
less than of being ashamed for himself. It 
was impossible to reproach him ; he was a man 
whom a breath of censure hardened into rock. 
While the sunshine of applause and sympathy 
shone upon him he was debonair and charming, 
but the first chilling breath of blame brought 
all the ice in his nature to the surface. She 
had experienced the change; she dared not 
encounter it. Besides, it was not in this first 
instant of a new revelation of his creed that 
she was to feel all the sense of his moral flexi- 


332 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


bility. That was reserved for later, when her 
keen instinct of justice and of individual rights 
had been outraged again and again. She loved 
him. To win a smile and a kind word from 
him what would she not have sacrificed ? The 
mere trifle of money was nothing. It was the 
feeling of having been unfairly treated, of hav- 
ing been not considered at all where she had 
every right to consideration. And yet the want 
of that trifle of money was to make her mis- 
erable for a long time to come. 

It was hard to be sweet and loving all day 
Sunday, with a weight of suppressed thought 
upon her mind, but forbearance nourishes 
affection, and by Monday she was her own 
tender, submissive self again. Besides, it had 
occurred to her that the money was not quite 
out of her reach ; William would give her a 
check if she asked him for it. 

When she made the suggestion he readily 
assented, and made out one to her for five 
dollars before he left Monday morning. When 
she timidly broached the subject again he 


MRS. MA V’S PR II A TE INCOME 


333 


looked annoyed, and said curtly that the land- 
lord had the money. 

“But ” began Laura, flushing hotly, 

then closed her lips and went quietly about 
her work. What was there to say ? The land- 
lord had to be paid, of course. Only some- 
how, she had thought that her husband would 
do that, as he had always managed it before. 

But the following month brought Mr. May 
increasing ill-luck. He would have been a 
generous and kindly man if he had prospered, 
and with nothing to bring it to the surface he 

might have gone through life, his lack of ster- 

% 

ling principle unsuspected. He could be gener- 
ous but not just ; he could recognize the rights 
of others — the right of tradesmen to be paid, 
the rights of his political comrades to a ful- 
filment of his promises to them — z/ everything 
went well with himself. But to tell the truth 
in the teeth of disaster, to face an irate cred- 
itor, to climb down from his height of vain am- 
bition and lay to heart that vow of duty his 
childish lips had uttered at his mother’s knee 


334 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


— “To labor truly to get my own living, and 
do my duty in that state of life to which it 
shall please God to call me ” — this was what 
William May had not it in him to perform. 
And his wife, with her clear moral sense, her 
unbending Puritan conscience, was doomed to 
see him fail. 

It was not the loss of her money that pained 
her so much when on the next pay-day she 
handed him her check in very pity and 
sorrow for his “bad luck.” It was the feeling 
that do what she would, work as she might, 
they would never be any better off. And the 
still more dreary revelation that as her energy 
was more feverishly applied his diminished. 
The more earnest and eager she grew to pay 
off their increasing debts and establish system 
in their ways, the more careless he became. 

She furbished up her wedding gown and 
made engagements to sing at parlor enter- 
tainments. She gave private lessons. And 
she made money. Some of it she handled 
herself, but most of it was “put in the bank,” 


MRS. MA Y'S PRIVA TE INCOME 


335 

and drawn out for a strange purpose : one she 
disapproved and disbelieved in utterly, but 
could not positively oppose. 

He was so boyishly eager about it, so con- 
fident of his success. Through activity un- 
precedented and maneuverings he did not 
care to remember, Mr. May had been put up 
for State senator from his district, and in all 
the bustle of officering small meetings and 
petty “ bossing,” his spirits were so high, and 
he was so good-humored and affectionate that 
his wife had not the heart to tell him that this 
was the worst waste of time in which he had 
yet engaged. For to her sane, cautious mind 
it was apparent from the first that he had not 
the shadow of a chance of being elected. 

It happened that on the very eve of the 
election she was engaged to sing at Carnegie 
Hall. He could not possibly spare time to 
take her, and she went down alone, in a car. 
Her eyes were very bright and a spot of color 
burned in each cheek. She was beautiful, with 
the beauty of spirit that has triumphed over 


336 SOUTHERN HEARTS 

flesh. But a physician in the audience whis- 
pered to his wife that that lovely woman was 
far along in consumption. “ And she will go 
quick, too, poor thing! ” 

The troublesome cough which she had neg- 
lected all winter annoyed her more than usual 
going home, but she was rather shocked than 
grieved when in the middle of the night a 
hemorrhage came on. Life was growing hard 
and duty perplexing. But sheer force of will 
and affection made her seem better next day, 
and she would not hear of her husband staying 
with her. He was pledged to appear elsewhere 
and she made him go. He did not come in 
till after midnight, and then — she sat up in 
sudden terror, listening to that stumbling step, 
those mumbling speeches ! It was not only 
his election that May had lost that night ; his 
manhood had followed. 

Laura turned her face to the wall. Was life 
to hold this new horror ? Ah, that she might 
escape the next day, with its shame, its sorrow 
and its pitiful regrets. But wh^ she expected. 


MRS. MAY'S PRIVATE INC OR/E 


337 


did not come. May was constitutionally in- 
capable of confessing himself at fault. He 
slept off his intoxication and did not get up 
until he was quite himself again, cool and non- 
committal. 

“ Bad luck again, girlie,” he said with an 
assumption of indifference. “ I can’t make you 
Mrs. Senator this time.” 

“ Poor Will ! ” the wife murmured. “ I am 
sorry, dear.” 

“You are better?” he asked hastily, struck 
with her expression. “You must have the 
doctor.” 

It was a tardy suggestion, and Laura smiled 
sadly. The doctor came, however. But all 
he could do was to hold out those vague hopes 
which are no comfort to anxious hearts. Be- 
fore long her mother was sent for, but the 
dread disease did its rapid work. Laura’s 
great trial to the last was the terrible sense of 
responsibility that haunted her about the ex- 
penses that were being incurred. 

“When I am not here, mother, what will 
22 


338 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

he do? Poor fellow, nobody understands him 
but me.” 

A little while afterwards she aroused herself 
from a fit of musing and murmured : 

“ This awful feeling of helplessness ! — and I 
tried so hard to set things right. I thought 
when I had a little income of my own that 
everything would go well.” 

“ You have killed yourself,” said her mother, 
darting a look of reproach at the unconscious 
husband, who entered the room at this mo- 
ment. 

“ Oh, no, don’t say that,” Laura whispered. 
“ I only did what I wanted to do. Will and I 

have been very happy, only ” But neither 

the mother nor the husband, bending ovt-y the 
bed, heard the rest of the sentence. 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 


















































- 






























r- 


J‘~ Zl 















THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA . 1 


UPON the Virginia side of the Potomac 
River, five miles across from Washington City 
whose twinkling lights can be distinctly seen by 
night, lies a little farm of about twenty-five acres, 
owned by a widow and her three daughters, 
Caroline, Minnie and Rosa. 

The dwelling is a villa rather than a farm- 
house, with wide verandas that are the favorite 
sitting-rooms of the family in summer. The 
glimpse they catch of the river traffic and of 
the far-off city gives them a cheerful feeling of 
nearness to active life, while they are removed 
from its noise and crowds. 

Besides this property Widow Jones had found 
herself possessed, at her husband’s death, of an 
immense tract of unproductive land down on 
Chesapeake Bay which could not be sold until 
» Copyright, 1896, by “ The Independent.” 

341 


342 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


Rosa, the younger girl, now eighteen, came of 
age. Meanwhile, the taxes vexed her soul. 

Hospitable, easy-going and accustomed to 
consider luxuries positive necessities, the family 
would have been severely straitened if it had 
not been for the nicety with which their various 
talents helped one another out. 

Caroline had excellent business ability and 
managed all the outside affairs. She drew the 
dividends on their railway stock, parleyed with 
lawyers, and engaged and settled with the hired 
men. In the burning August weather, when a 
dozen red-shirted Negroes were to be cared for, 
this slender young girl, in flaring straw hat and 
short gingham dress, mounted her horse and 
rode up and down the fields, a keen-eyed, cheery, 
sweet-voiced overseer. Regardless of her own 
meals she helped old black Jessie prepare the 
meals for the men in the little cabin, and there 
was no complaint as to quality or quantity 
under her liberal rule. She did the marketing 
also and bought the other supplies. Then 
Mrs. J ones took up the work, and her deft fingers 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 343 

and good taste converted crude materials into 
food and raiment for the quartet. She was a 
notable housekeeper and the best of neighbors, 
her round, jolly visage being sure to appear at 
every moment of need, and her chicken broth 
and jellies lingered pleasantly in the memory 
of the fretful convalescent. 

Minnie’s function was the care of all the live 
animals on the farm. She had unerring judg- 
ment concerning mules and horses, understood 
the peculiarities of cows, and knew everything 
worth knowing about poultry and bees. She 
was a plump, happy-looking blonde, with a 
lovely hand, a neat foot, and a playfully witty 
tongue that, like her own bees, never stung the 
wise but kept fools at bay. Alert and busy 
from morning till night she gave no thought to 
the admirers who sighed for her smiles, but 
laughingly turned them over to Rosa, who had, 
she said, nothing else to do but to make herself 
charming. 

Rosa was the strongest possible contrast to 
her energetic sisters. Rarely beautiful, and 


344 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


gifted with ail artistic faculty that nearly ap- 
proached genius, she was apparently utterly de- 
void of ambition or sense of responsibility, and 
was content to be waited upon and cared for 
as if she was still the petted infant whose graces 
had at the outset won the willing service of 
every one about her. 

Her form was of medium height, but so sym- 
metrical that she appeared taller than she was. 
Her head was borne on her full, white throat 
with a sort of dreamy grace, bent it almost 
seemed by the weight of her magnificent tresses, 
the color of ripe wheat when the sun is shining 
upon it, and falling a quarter of a yard below 
her waist. Her eyes were of a deep, dark 
brown, with the softness of a Newfoundland 
dog’s when he is gazing wistfully at his master. 
It would have been as impossible to say any- 
thing harsh to Rosa, when she opened those 
great dark eyes and looked at you, as it would 
be to strike a dove or a gazelle or a sweet 
young baby. Usually the heavy, blue- veined 
lids half veiled them, and as her seashell cheeks 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 345 

warmed to their pinkest tone, and her exquisite 
bow of a mouth fell slightly apart, as she lay, 
as she loved to do, in the hammock on the west 
veranda, an artist would have thought her the 
very embodiment of love’s young dream of 
sweet, maidenly beauty. 

She seemed all softness and gentleness. Per- 
haps only her mother knew what strength of 
will and temper lay behind Rosa’s placid brow 
and square little chin. There had been some 
stout tussels between a determined little mother 
and a rosebud of a baby in the years gone by ; 
and although the match might have seemed 
an unequal one, the result had always been the 
same. “A compromise,” Major Jones had 
laughingly called it, meaning, as he explained 
once in a candid moment, that the rosebud had 
its own way. 

Rosa’s way was only passively, not actively 
objectionable. All she asked was to be let 
alone ; allowed to paint undisturbed in her un- 
tidy attic studio when the whim seized her, 
and to lie in the hammock like a kitten, dozing 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


346 

the hours away when she did not choose to 
exert herself. Occasionally she would have 
spells of helpfulness, and for several days her 
stool and box of colors would be set up beside 
the parlor or dining-room doorway, while she 
decorated the pannels with sprays of wistaria 
and masses of fern, so true to nature that one 
wondered where a little country girl had ever 
learned to paint after such a manner. 

One warm afternoon in early September she 
was sitting on her stool in the hall, which ran 
through the middle of the house from end to 
end, putting slow, effective touches to a border 
above the dado which she had begun in the 
spring, and with characteristic indifference had 
left unfinished until now. Caroline, just in 
from a tour to the orchard, had thrown herself 
down upon the settee to rest, and was exchang- 
ing remarks with her mother about a certain 
dress trimming which the elder lady had under 
way when she suddenly broke off to exclaim : 

“ If there isn’t Mr. Brent coming, and not a 
speck of meat in the house ! Now, I suppose 


THE LAZIEST GTRL IN VIRGINIA 347 

I shall have to go to town to market. I should 
think it was enough for him to be here every 
Sunday and Wednesday, without dropping 
upon us between whiles.” 

“Let Jessie kill a chicken,” suggested Mrs. 
Jones, soothingly. 

“ But you know he doesn’t eat chickens. If 
he was like any civilized American he would. 
But nothing except a round of raw beef satis- 
fies his English appetite ! ” 

But despite this small grumble, she smiled 
cordially as a good-looking, middle-aged man 
with a vigorous, florid face, set off by a pair of 
heavy black whiskers, came briskly up the path 
and included all of them in a general, informal 
bow. 

“ Do you like omelet ? ” she asked reflec- 
tively, as he took a seat near Rosa, and began 
commenting upon her work with an easy cen- 
sorship which was evidently not disagreeable 
to her. 

He gave a little shudder. “ ‘ I’ll no pullet 
sperm in my brew,’ ” he quoted. 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


348 

“ Oh, I might have known you for a Fal- 
staff,” retorted Caroline, rising. “ Well, 
Mamma, I’m off.” 

“ Not on my account, Miss Caroline. See 
here, I’ve brought my animal diet with me, 
knowing that you ladies subsist on tea and fruit 
when I’m not about.” And from his coat 
pocket he drew a roll of brown paper, three- 
quarters of a yard long, and held it out. 

“ Prime bologna,” he added, complacently, as 
both mother and daughter laughed heartily, 
and Rosa turned to give one of her slow, sweet 
smiles. 

Brent was a “ family friend.” The major 
had made his acquaintance at his club and 
brought him home to dine one day when Rosa 
was a winsome, tumbling baby ; and although 
he had grown grayer and stouter during the 
years he had been coming out to the farm, 
ostensibly to oversee Rosa’s painting — for 
which he never would hear of compensation — 
he had not faltered in a certain purpose con- 
ceived soon after that first visit, and as unsus- 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 349 

pected by Mrs. Jones and her two elder 
daughters as it was patent to Rosa herself. 

There were some rare affinities between them, 
even aside from their painting. Brent’s British 
phlegm was mellowed by a luxuriance of im- 
agination that he had inherited from an East 
Indian mother. His temperament was a mix- 
ture of vigor, warmth and languor ; and while 
he was not in the least degree adaptable, he 
had a faculty of changing the atmosphere of a 
company to suit himself ; so that if others were 
not pleased it seemed to be they, not he, who 
was out of place. If they yielded up their in- 
dividuality to his, well and good ; if not, they 
dropped out of the talk ; that was all. Brent 
was a fluent and entertaining talker. He liked 
to tell stories of tiger hunts and other jungle 
pastimes ; and Rosa, reclining with her dreamy 
eyes half shut, liked to listen and feel herself 
pleasantly thrilled and excited without other 
necessity than to give up her mind to follow 
where he led. 

Her education had been desultory and su- 


35 ° 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


perficial. Brent had played the largest part in 
it, and he had molded her nature at his pleasure 
by catering to certain biases that he had per- 
ceived to be unchangeable, and for the rest 
giving her the side of life and affairs which he 
preferred her to believe. What other experi- 
ences he had had besides those he chose to tell 
them, these innocent women neither conjec- 
tured nor troubled themselves to inquire. It 
was enough that he had been “the major’s 
friend.” 

He had lodgings in town, but his landlady 
scarcely ever saw him ; for when he was not 
roaming around upon one of his sketching tours 
he seemed to live in the Corcoran Art Gallery, 
where Rosa painted under his superintendence 
several hours each week. He had really de- 
voted himself to the girl’s development with a 
zeal beyond what would have appeared to be 
necessary in the “ family friend.” Perhaps 
Rosa thanked him in private, for she never did 
so before the others. She treated him always 
\vith the same indolent familiarity, and accepted 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 351 

his advice, his help and his devotion as a mere 
matter of course ; but she generally did as he 
bade her. 

This afternoon she continued to fill in her 
charcoal outlines until she grew tired, and then, 
dropping her brushes, slipped to a cushion and, 
crossing her hands behind her head, leaned back 
and looked up at him like a weary seraph. 

“ Lazy child,” said Brent, smiling, and taking 
her dropped brushes. “ That stem is well done, 
Rosa ; but I want you to leave flowers for a 
while and begin on that study of the nurse and 
child. It is time for you to begin to think less 
of technic and study the masters. I wish you 
could go abroad now.” 

“ You have made me think of nothing but 
technic,” said the girl. 

“ Certainly. There are many stages in art, 
and that is the preliminary one. But you are 
now to make an advance. How little you real- 
ize your advantages. If I had your genius! ” 

“ I realize one advantage — having you for a 
teacher,” she said in a low tone. 


35 2 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


The others had dropped away, and they were 
by themselves. 

Brent moved closer to her. • “ Have you 
thought of what I talked to you about ? ” 

“ It’s no use to talk about that ; I rather 
think they expect me to make a great match, 
some time. Mamma wouldn’t consider you 
eligible, you know,” she drawled, softly, with 
smooth, matchless insolence. 

Brent looked at her with an expression she 
did not understand ; but she never troubled 
herself about what was beyond her easy com- 
prehension. And herein Brent had vastly the 
advantage ; he understood her to the depths of 
her nature, and he knew perfectly that he had 
made himself an essential part of her existence. 
But he was wise enough to b^ patient. For 
the present he allowed her to waive the subject 
aside ; nor did he betray even by the quiver of 
an eyelash that she had wounded his self-love. 
Indeed, their temperaments were much alike, 
and neither one was troubled with sensitive- 
ness, Of the two the robust, mastiff-like man 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 353 

had more than the brown-eyed angel, who now 
took to the hammock and left him to finish her 
work ; for it was as natural for him to work as 
it was for her to be idle. 

“You must get settled in town early this 
fall/' he said to the mother, when the family 
had assembled again on the veranda after din- 
ner. “ I have laid out a good winter’s work 
for Rosa at the gallery, and I want her to start 
as soon as possible.” 

“ Mr. Brent, I admire your coolness,” com- 
mented Caroline. “ If you expect Rosa to put 
in a steady winter’s work you must have sud- 
denly created a remarkable change in her.” 

“ I really don’t see how we are to go to town 
at all this winter,” said Mrs. Jones, wrinkling 
her pretty forehead. “ The Farleys haven’t yet 
positively pledged themselves to take the place, 
as we depended on their doing ; and of course 
we can’t go unless we let this house.” 

“ Oh, the Farleys will take the place,” said 
Brent confidently. “ And there is a nice little 
house on “ H ” Street that will be vacant about 
23 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


354 

the first of October. I wish you would go in 
to-morrow and look at it.” 

“ Give me the address,” said Caroline. 44 I 
have to go in town to-morrow, and I’ll take a 
peep at it. Then, if it seems worth while for 
you to take the trouble, mamma dear, you can 
go in next week.” 

“ Only don’t let it slip through your fingers,” 
counseled Brent. 44 Rosa, don’t you want to 
take a little walk up the hill and see the sun- 
set ? ” 

41 Get the wheelbarrow ! ” said Minnie, briskly. 
44 You’ll never get Rosa to climb the hill.” 

But Brent continued to look smilingly at 
Rosa, and, somewhat to their surprise, she got 
up and went with him. As they began to 
climb the gentle slope he took hold of her arm, 
and she leaned against him with the same un- 
concern with which she would have accepted 
aid from one of her sisters. They were gone 
half an hour, and when they came back a close 
observer might have noted a satisfied look in 
Brent’s face. He had made a slight, very 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 355 

slight, advance in his plans, whatever they 
were. 

It was in accordance with them that the 
family moved into the little house on “ H ” 
Street within a fortnight. Every afternoon saw 
Rosa seated before a Corot in the main gallery 
of the Corcoran Art Building, and for at least 
two hours she was busily occupied. J ust how it 
came about no one could have said. Perhaps 
Rosa herself was not aware of the tightening 
of a leash which had been woven securely 
about her, and that had guided and now held 
her to certain duties. Once, as he sat beside 
her, painting away upon his small canvas with 
those minute, exquisite touches which charac- 
terized his style, Brent said, with some signifi- 
cance : 

“ You work very well under direction, Rosa ; 
but you wouldn’t set a stroke if I were not 
here, would you ? ” 

She laughed, and turned her eyes upon him in- 
quiringly. “ Wouldn’t I ? ” she asked ; “ ah, well, 
perhaps not. But then, you see, you arehere” 


35 ^ 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


“ You have grown so used to having me al- 
ways at hand, that you couldn’t get on at all 
without me, could you ? ” 

“ Get on without you ? ” she repeated. 
“ Why, I never thought of it.” 

The next day he let her think of it. For a 
week he was absent on a sketching tour. When 
he returned he discovered that she had taken a 
vacation also ; and then, for the first time in 
her life, he said a few stern words to her. They 
were very few, and without any hint of anger ; 
but the girl crimsoned, and opened her eyes 
pathetically. Any other man would have been 
self-condemned ; but Brent, while instantly re- 
suming his usual manner, did not lessen the 
effect of his rebuke ; and from this time her 
manner toward him began to undergo a change. 
It was imperceptible to others, but apparent to 
Brent. She was no longer so sweetly insolent 
to him ; she was more timid, more tractable ; 
and she attended more steadily to her work, 
seeming to set a new value upon the praise of 
which he had always been lavish. 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 357 

The winter passed and the enervating air of 
April crept over the city. One afternoon Rosa 
threw down her brushes petulantly, exclaiming 
that she could not make another stroke. 

Brent quietly gathered her implements and 
his own and stored them neatly away. Then 
he laid his hand over hers and said, in a per- 
fectly matter-of-fact tone : 

“ Let’s go and get married, Rosa ? ” 

For a minute they looked at one another in 
silence. Then her eyes dropped to her dress, 
a pink print, fresh and crisp under the great 
gray apron which she had begun to untie. 

“ What ! In a calico dress? ” she said. 

“ Yes, just as you are ; and now.” 

“ What will they say at home ?” 

“ Think how much trouble we are going to 
save your mother. We will tell them this 
evening. Come, Rosa, I have been waiting for 
you a good many years ; don’t keep me wait- 
ing any longer.” 

“ It is dreadfully absurd,” she observed. 
“ What will you do with me? ” 


3 s 8 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

“ Take you abroad next week, and when we 
come back settle you down in the prettiest 
little house you ever saw. I have bought one 
up on Capitol Hill, and you shall be its little 
mistress.” 

“ I don’t like housekeeping,” remarked Rosa ; 
but she was walking with him toward the door. 
Suddenly she stopped. “ We can’t get married 
without a license, can we?” 

“ I have the license,” said Brent, touching his 
waistcoat pocket. “ I got it yesterday.” 

“ It seems to me,” she said, pouting a little, 
“ You were rather premature. How did you 
know I would have you?” 

“ I believed in my lucky star. We were 
meant for each other, my dear.” 

She was silent after this. They walked half- 
a-dozen squares and stopped before a house 
next to a church. As Brent rang the bell he 
saw that the girl was trembling slightly, and he 
lost no time in getting her into the parlor, 
where a puzzled minister came to them a mo- 
ment or so later. Brent explained and produced 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 359 

the license. Rosa was nineteen and her father 
was not living. There was no delay, and in 
the presence of the minister’s wife and daughter 
(who took the bride for a pretty servant girl 
and were condescending) the ceremony was 
performed. But for the heavy ring that en- 
circled her finger the girl might have believed 
that she was dreaming, as Brent drew her out 
of the house again and hailed a passing horse- 
car to take them to her mother’s house. 

Minnie opened the door, and through the 
dusk her quick eyes perceived something un- 
usual in her sister ; but Brent, giving her no 
time for questions, drew his wife into the little 
parlor, where the widow sat with her sewing. 

“ Mrs. Jones,” he said calmly, “ Rosa and I 
are married.” As she got up hastily, the color 
rushing to her face, he added, “ I believe my 
old friend the major would not have refused to 
give me his daughter.” 

It was a stroke of genius. Instead of utter- 
ing the angry words upon her lips the widow 
fell back upon her chair, crying. The major, 


360 SOU THE RN HEARTS 

dead, was not less the family oracle; and even 
the girls, who had burst into exclamations, and 
were not to be repressed for half an hour or so, 
felt that, irregular and shocking as the affair 
was, yet there was within it a grain of amelio- 
ration. 

“ But that she should have got married in a 
sixpenny calico ! ” exclaimed Caroline, tearfully. 
“ I never shall get over that.” 

“ I will buy her a gown or two in Paris,” said 
the mew brother-in-law. “ We shall sail next 
week, and be gone a year, or perhaps longer.” 

But three years passed before the little house 
on Capitol Hill had to be vacated by its tenant 
in favor of the owners, who walked in upon 
the Jones family one day, when the harvest 
apples were ripe, and the two girls sat upon the 
porch of the farmhouse paring a bowlful of 
them for supper. 

“ What is the change in Rosa?” mother and 
sisters asked each other when the pair had gone 
back to town the next morning. Mrs. Brent 
was even more beautiful than she had been as 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 361 

a girl. She did not look unhappy. Yet there 
was a difference. 

The family found out what it meant when 
they began to visit the little house in town. 
Rosa had found another guide than her own 
sweet will. She no longer idled the days away, 
but sat patiently upon her little stool and 
painted from morning till late in the afternoon, 
while Brent — the personification of vigilance — 
hovered about, pipe in mouth, seeing to the 
thousand and one things about the house, 
which, except for his superintendence, kept 
itself, and dividing the rest of his attention 
between Rosa’s canvas and his own. 

“ Do you know,” said Caroline, indignantly, 
“ that Rosa — our lazy little Rosa — has made 
fifteen hundred dollars the past year, while 
Brent has only made three hundred?” 

“ That’s what he married her for,” said 
Minnie, with a rapid inspiration. “ I wondered 
what impelled him. I thought it wasn’t 
love.” 

“ My dear, he seems very fond of her,” said 


362 SOUTHERN HE A R TS 

Mrs. Jones, divided between a wish to cry and 
a wish to make the best of it. 

u He is fond of her/' declared Caroline, “ and 
she’s fond of him. But if ever a girl found a 
master she has. He makes her work as I never 
expected to see Rosa work. Not at house- 
work, dear me, no ! She is not to waste her 
precious strength on such things. She is to 
devote herself to art, which is to make her 
reputation and his living. That’s all there is 
to it.” 

“ Perhaps it is not the worst thing that could 
have happened to her,” mused Minnie. “ There 
is a kind of nature that needs to be compelled 
to make the best of itself.” 

“ Don’t you want some brute of an English- 
man to compel you to make the best of your- 
self?” snapped Caroline. 

“ No,” answered Minnie, quietly. “ What 
would do for Rosa would never suit me.” 

“ Well, I think we had better go in and take 
some peaches and straighten up that disorderly 
house,” said the elder sister. 


THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 363 

They found Rosa sitting absorbed over a 
beautiful screen which was a piece of ordered 
work, to cost a hundred and fifty dollars, while 
Brent stood at the kitchen door, smoking 
placidly as he contemplated a tableful of un- 
washed dishes. 

“ Come in, sisters both,” he said, gaily. 
“ But don’t stop Rosa just now ; she hates to 
be interrupted when she is at work.” 



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AN AWAKENING 1 


“And who is that tall young man in the 
store, who stood there as if nothing could in- 
duce him to take his hands from his pockets?” 

Miss Stretton’s companion looked as if he 
were mystified by her scornful tone. “ That’s 
Albert Johnson,” he answered in his matter-of- 
fact way. “ He’s only been back hyar about 
six months. A couple o’ years ago he went 
down to Texas and made about five hundred 
dollars, and then, all to onct, he turned up 
hyar again. He’s nephew to old Johnson, and 
stays in th’ store, mostly.” 

“ Doing what?” asked Miss Stretton, crisply. 

“ Why, doin’ whatever’s to do,” answered 
Jerry Douglas with his thin laugh. He was a 
tall, bony youth, with gray eyes and a delicate 
mouth. Although unformed and shy, there 
1 Copyright, 1896, by “ The Independent.” 

367 


368 SOUTHERN HEARTS 

was a hint of character about him ; which was 
the reason why Miss Stretton gave him the 
honor of her company that morning on his 
trip to Stoneyton. It was partly in pursuance 
of her amiable wish to draw him out, and partly 
because she liked the ride on horseback. She 
was usually talkative, but now they ambled 
along the dusty pike in silence. 

“Ah — I jest thought of it, Miss Julia,” Jerry 
said suddenly. “Old Johnson’s got a nice 
horse he might let you have. Bert’s been 
ridin’ it since he come back, but he can’t want 
it all th’ time. I’ll see if I kin git it fur you, 
if you say so.” 

“Of course I say so, Jerry,” retorted Miss 
Stretton, coming out of her brown study and 
turning her bright blue eyes upon him. 
“ And why didn’t you think of it before ? But 
I know it takes you Virginia young men a long 
time.” 

Young Douglas laughed again uneasily. “ I 
s’pose we’re ruther backward compared to th’ 
men you know, but you must recollect we’ve 


AN AWAKENING 369 

been under a cloud since th’ war. We haven’t 
got eddication, and consequently we feel at a 
disadvantage. Me, now, I’ve been to school, 
but what do I know ? Th’ only thing’s fur me 
to go ter Texas.” 

“Yes, and make a little money and come 
back again and loaf around till it is spent,” 
commented the girl inwardly. But she said 
aloud, “ Don’t be disheartened, Jerry. It isn’t 
what we know that counts ; it’s what we do.” 

“ What I want t’ do is t’ make money,” Jerry 
muttered ; “ only th’ people home won’t let me 
go ’way.” 

“Your time will come if you don’t give up, 
never fear,” she returned kindly, as they rode 
up to the stile and he awkwardly helped her 
off the great plow-horse. 

She stood at the gate for a minute, watching 
the angular, boyish figure lead the horse to the 
stable, heard the rough but not unkindly, “ Go 
in thar, now, Victor — stand, sir ! ” And then 
all was still. 

In front of the low frame-house was a small, 

24 


37 ° 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


trim garden, with two beds of red geranium 
bordered by bits of whitened oyster-shells. 
Behind, lay the fields ; to the left, the stable, 
pig-sty and orchard. On the right, was an un- 
kempt bit of woods, thick with undergrowth. 
Some day they were going to cut out that un- 
dergrowth, which obstructed the fine view of 
the hills beyond. 

“ Some day,” mused Miss Stretton, “ great 
things are to be done! ” And yet she was not 
without pity as she contemplated the few acres 
of worn-out land, the meager cattle, the small, 
uncertain fruit-crop which made the living of 
the worthy lady, Mrs. Douglas, and her slug- 
gish, semi-invalid husband. This summer they 
had for the first time followed the example of 
their neighbors and augmented their income 
by taking two summer boarders ; there was not 
room for more. 

Two or three days went by, and Jerry had 
apparently done nothing about the horse. 
Miss Stretton’s dearest wish was to hire an 
animal on which she might take her daily rides 


AN A WAKENING 


3 7 1 

with credit to herself and less jarring of her 
bones. The great beast now at her service 
resembled -some creature in process of trans- 
formation to some other species, so shambling, 
so long-mouthed, so ashamed of his own ap- 
pearance did he seem. But, rendered desperate 
by Jerry’s procrastination, she mounted Prince 
one morning and turned toward the village. 

“ You have shaken me to pieces — you, 
Prince ! ” she said reproachfully as she stopped 
him in front of the store. 

Stoneyton was perhaps the very smallest vil- 
lage ever dignified by the name. There was a 
church, the store, and two neighboring houses, 
one beside the store and one just across the 
narrow street. Two swaying elms almost cov- 
ered this space with their low-hanging branches, 
and a broken wagon-shaft lying in the way 
made it difficult for a vehicle to turn there. A 
cart and horse now stood in the road, its driver 
absent. There was, for a rarity, no one on the 
stoop ; all was unusually still ; and Miss Stret- 
ton, waiting impatiently until the driver should 


SO UTHEKN HEAR TS 


372 

come out and start off, leaving the road again 
a thoroughfare, sat still on her tall steed, and 
let her eyes roam dreamily around on the well- 
known but ever-pleasing landscape. 

The customer came out, and with her came 
young Mr. Johnson, who stowed away her par- 
cels, helped her into the wagon, and handed 
her the reins before he turned to the pretty 
girl with a tinge of color still dyeing his brown 
cheek. 

“ Is— your uncle in?” asked Miss Stretton 
sweetly. 

He was very sorry, but his uncle had gone 
to Port Royal that morning to see a sick sister. 
Could he do anything for her ? 

“ Well,” she said, hesitating, “ I suppose you 
might do just as well, only — I had expected to 
talk with your uncle.” 

Young Johnson looked puzzled but admir- 
ing. It was the admiration in his splendid 
dark eyes that embarrassed her. To the city 
girls who came up to the mountain every one 
of these little country stores, and every farm 


AN A WAKENING 


373 

which boasted a son or two of some old, im- 
poverished family, furnished an escort to dances 
and picnics, and the beau of a summer. Miss 
Stretton was not exempt from girlish weak- 
nesses, and as the handsome countryman stood 
there waiting for her probable order for rib- 
bons or candy or stationery, she wished that 
she could settle her little matter of business 
with some one else. 

But she took it like a douche at last, all at 
once. “Jerry told me that your uncle has a 
nice riding-horse, and I want one for a month 
or so. Would he hire it? Could I arrange 
the matter with you ? ” 

“ Well, the horse is mine, in fact. Uncle 
made a present of it to me,” explained Albert, 
kicking a little stone in the road. 

“ Oh ! ” said the young lady. The affair was 
now a nuisance to both of them. For her 
part, she felt that, if she proceeded, there must 
ensue some pecuniary loss in the transaction ; 
she must be large and uncalculating. On the 
other hand, Albert shrank from the mention of 


374 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


dollars and cents, although if the matter had 
been conducted through a third party, he would 
not have hesitated to make something out of 
the Yankee girl. Being a Virginian, he could 
not now put a cool, business face upon it. It 
occurred to him that he would like to drive her 
down to the hop at Berryville to-morrow night. 
How would it look to make bargains before 
tendering an invitation ! 

He looked up and down the road ; the soft 
breeze from over the hills just rustled the 
leaves, the low grunt of a porker reached their 
ears from around the house, a dog barked 
somewhere, but no figure disturbed the scene ; 
nobody was coming, they must talk it out. 

“ Well?” she interrogated impatiently. She 
looked very graceful and saucy. He glanced 
upward and caught her fleeting smile. 

“ I’ll tell you what, Miss Stretton,” he said 
with the relief of an inspiration, “ you mustn’t 
make bargains in the dark. Try my Sultana 
to-morrow, and if she goes to suit you, we’ll 
talk further.” 


AN A WAKENING 


375 

“ All right, Mr. Johnson, and I’m extremely 
obliged to you.” She was grateful for the sug- 
gestion ; Jerry should be messenger next time. 

They were now at ease and could look one 
another frankly in the face. Each knew the 
other well by hearsay. Who did not know of 
the Johnson family, who had lived on the same 
fine old place for a hundred years and more ? 
And to which of the inquisitive natives was the 
affable young lady a stranger when she had 
been staying for a fortnight at the Douglas 
farm ? It was quite conventional for them to 
call each other by name and to linger a few 
minutes talking. 

She rode off finally, with a charming smile, 
and Albert went into the dingy store whistling, 
with his hands in his pockets; handsome and 
lazy, and with nothing better to do than to re- 
cline on the counter and recollect each detail of 
the conversation. 

The next morning he made taking the horse 
over an excuse for a call, and obtained her prom- 
ise to go with him to the hop. Every one 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


376 

went ; the road was gay with vehicles of every 
description, and on the ten-mile drive there and 
back their acquaintance grew old. If Miss 
Stretton knew how to talk, Albert could listen 
eloquently. 

Afterward she tried to recall something sen- 
sible and original in his talk, which would 
account for the pleasure she had taken in his 
company, but there was nothing in her memory 
save confused impressions of what he must 
have meant. 

“ What a shame,” she said to herself vehe- 
mently, “ for a young man of intelligence and 
versatility — he knows many things and could 
know more if he tried— -to be playing fifth 
wheel to a coach on a stupid country road — 
clerk in that little store which a girl of twelve 
could manage alone ! ” 

And as soon as the chance came, she told 
him this, indirectly, and with many a friendly 
ameliorating glance. Albert took her lecture 
meekly. It came one morning when they were 
riding together. She had found Sultana de- 


AN A WAKENING 


377 


lightful, and he had made a joking bargain, let- 
ting her ride if he might ride with her when 
he had time and his mother’s horse could be 
spared from the farm. And so this little matter 
was adjusted without any reference to money. 

It was rare pleasure to the city girl to gallop 
over the open country of a fair August morn- 
ing before the sun grew red ; the fresh breeze 
from the Blue Ridges colored her cheeks and 
lighted up her eyes, while it filled her mind 
with longings, arousing her energy. 

“ It is energy that you young men lack,” she 
admonished him in a sweet, deferential tone. 
“ Energy ! Chalk it up on the fences, and spell 
it out as you saunter along these dull little 
country lanes.” 

Albert thought best to treat it as a joke, but 
that only made her more earnest. Then he 
changed his tactics, and met the reproach by 
a degree of pathetic admission that unsettled 
her. 

She found it a fascinating pastime to chide 
this handsome idler for making little use of his 


SO U THE RH HE A R TS 


378 

abilities and she longed to be able to exert a 
strongly stimulating influence. But when he 
told her that, on the whole, he enjoyed his life 
as it was and had no wish to change it, that 
there was virtue in contentment and that he 
appreciated his lot, much as she seemed to 
despise it 

“ I didn’t say I despised it ! ” she exclaimed, 
abashed, her airy ambitions seeming for an in- 
stant less grand. But when she looked at her 
young Alcibiades, lost in the luxury of peace, 
she pined to send him forth among men to do 
battle for the things men care to win. And 
yet the girl had such tact that her touch did 
not irritate. The young Southerner felt her 
thrilling tones move him pleasantly ; she cooled 
his languid breath like a fresh North wind com- 
ing in the summer heat. Throughout, his face 
wore the same look of rich, indolent peace. 
One day, however, he opened his splendid, dark 
eyes wide, and asked her just what, she would 
have a man do to prove himself a man. 

Miss Stretton was as vague and inexperienced 


AN A WAKENING 


379 


as women usually are who urge extraordinary 
feats upon men in whom they are interested. 
But not to seem foolish, she took the matter 
into consideration. 

“ I’ll give you time,” he said, laughing when 
she hesitated, “ but — you have been so hard on 
me, Miss Julia, that I really must press the 
question home.” 

After this she listened to the reports about 
him, and heard much of his sweet temper under 
provocation — to which, she owned, she herself 
could testify — of his kindness of heart, his 
courage, his goodness to his feeble mother. 
The country people relied upon him ; his moral 
character was spotless. Yet, even while she 
learned to admire him, she was not satisfied. 
Seeing her gem thus proved real, made her 
the more determined to bring out its luster. 

His question was carried gravely in her mind, 
and she forbore to resume the subject until 
she could say something wise and practical. 

They met often, there were so many affairs 
during the summer to bring them together, 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


380 

hops, drives, and picnics, and then the camp- 
meetings, which brought out all the county. 
She saw him sometimes in attendance on his 
mother there, always gentlemanly and good, 
where the other boys were openly rowdy. She 
saw him in the store, always patient with the 
freaks of customers and with the cross humors 
of his uncle. 

And one day she met him (and her heart was 
touched) carrying along the road a little crying 
child, whose bare toes were crinkled up with 
the hurt from a sharp stone. The ragamuffin 
sat perched upon the broad shoulder and 
peered down at the lady with eyes of cerulean 
blue. He hugged his friend a little closer but 
with undiminished confidence. Albert colored 
slightly, but walked along beside the stylish 
girl without apologizing for his burden. 

“ Can’t I do something for the little fellow ? ” 
she asked gently, and being used to children (she 
was a school teacher), she saw in a minute what 
the matter was, and taking from her purse a 
piece of court-plaster, she made Albert set him 


AN A WAKENING 


38i 

down while she applied it to the cut. If her 
fingers shrank from the dirty little foot neither 
of her watchers saw it. 

“ There, little man, does that feel better?” 

“ I wants ter b’ toted,” said the urchin, irrel- 
evantly. 

“ Of course,” said Albert, shouldering him 
again. “ Didn’t I promise to carry you clear 
home ? But if the lady had done something 
for me, I’d have thanked her, heh?” 

But the child’s face expressed only a vacant 
sort of contentment. 

And they all went on together until they 
reached a poor house where a woman stood at 
the door, looking anxiously up and down the 
road. As her boy was brought to her, she 
caught him up, with a shake and a kiss deliv- 
ered simultaneously, 

“ That’s jus’ like ye, Albert,” she said gruffly. 
“ I’ve been ter’ble worried fur th’ past hour — 
feared he’d got runned over. Yer ma well?” 

“ Middling, thank you, Mrs. Smithers.” 

Then he rubbed his handkerchief over his 


382 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

forehead and asked Miss Stretton if she was 
going “ to town ” this hot day. 

“ Yes, I’m trying to walk off a restless fit, and 
I have a letter to mail.” 

“ Better give that to me. See, I’ve picked 
up three or four along the road and got half-a- 
dozen commissions — hope I shan’t forget ’em.” 

“Are you general errand-boy?” she de- 
manded impatiently. 

“You wouldn’t want me to be unneigh- 
borly ? Besides,” he added with a twinkle in 
his eye, “ I thought you found fault with me 
for not being useful ! ” 

“ Oh, no, not in that way. Don’t you sup- 
pose I see that you are useful here, that every- 
body likes you and depends upon you — but it 
is such a waste of yourself to be busied with 
such little things — there are larger places to be 
filled elsewhere 

“ And larger men to fill them,” he said seri- 
ously. “ There ain’t as much to me as you 
suppose. It seems to me my place is here, 
right in this little sleepy village. I can be a 


AN A IV A KENING 3<*3 

help to my uncle and to others, and my mother 
can’t do without me.” 

“ Oh ! ” she cried sharply. This was a stum- 
bling-block she had to recognize. Yet she found 
that he hardly understood her. She wanted to 
stir him up to discontent with himself and his 
surroundings, so that he might be led to en- 
large his mental outlook. The thing was for 
him first to become enlightened, aspiring, su- 
perior to his friends — action would follow. 

Although it is hard for a man to follow the 
rapid deviations of a woman’s mind, yet the 
most phlegmatic have their moments of in- 
sight. Miss Stretton had revealed a great deal 
more than she was aware to the young country- 
man, and he was less dull than he seemed. It 
came to him that there was something that he 
wanted to say, but all his ideas grew confused 
as he thought. He looked around with an 
uncertain, wistful gaze. He was only a poor 
man, surrounded by commonplace, meager 
things ; advantages had been lacking to him ; 
perhaps, as she had said, he had not improved 


384 SOUTHERN HEARTS 

his chances. And yet it seemed to him that 
he had done his duty. 

“ I know our farmers’ lives up here must 
seem mean to you,” he said slowly, “poor and 
small. You think we might do more and make 
more out of ourselves. Well, maybe we might. 
I think that, after a while, we’ll find new things 
to do. I thought once I’d strike out, and I 
went to Texas. But can you fancy what life 
is down there among the cattle-drovers? I 
couldn’t stand it, Miss Stretton. I didn’t love 
money well enough to sink myself quite so 
low. And so I came back. Maybe you think 
I lay ’round a heap, but I do all that comes in 
my way, and somebody’d have to do it. If I 
was ambitious, I s’pose I’d want to be some- 
thing else besides a country storekeeper, but it 
seems to me there’s more love in my heart for 
this poor land and for my neighbors than for 
anything else. I’m not of a restless disposi- 
tion, and yet I’ve got my share of pride. I’m 
not old yet,” — the fine figure straightening a 
little, involuntarily — “ and maybe after a while 


AN A WAKENING 385 

something else will come to me that I can 
do.” 

“ And you are content to wait for it — the 
chance — to come, are you ? ” she asked, bend- 
ing her earnest gaze upon him. 

“ I won’t quote the only bit of Milton I re- 
member, but I believe I serve a useful purpose 
even while I wait for promotion — that is, what 
you think promotion.” 

The girl was silenced. She could not exactly 
understand how a man could be like this, yet 
in the midst of her defeat was a feeling of 
triumph in him. Through the far niente her 
energetic mind had so despised there came the 
gleam of a fine thought, a real purpose, before 
which her woman’s nature bowed, rejoicing. 
Obeying a common impulse, they lingered in 
the lane. 

“ They need a new teacher in this district,” 
said Albert abruptly, and looking full at her. 
“ If it is your mission to put energy into us, 
why not begin the missionary work there ? 

Take the boys young.” 

25 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


386 

She had no reply to this but a look of re- 
proach. He had put away her friendship for 
himself, he recommended her to other matters. 
Tacitly, he implied that she was incapable of 
the sacrifice involved in his suggestion. It was 
ironical. 

She turned to walk on, but Albert started 
and caught her hand. “ Don’t be angry, Miss 
Julia! I only meant that it would be less 
dangerous with them than it has been with me. 
I — I am more stirred than you would like me 
to be ” 

His blazing eyes transfixed her. For an 
instant she stared, then drew her hand away 
and put it up to her face. 

“Yes,” he continued brokenly, “ I know it’s 
no use to speak, you couldn’t condescend to 
this paltry existence — you want the fulness 
and brightness of the city, — the company of an 
educated man. There isn’t anything about me 
that’s fit to associate with you. Well ? I must 
beg pardon, I s’pose, and yet I couldn’t for- 
bear letting you know that, while you’ve been 


AN A WAKENING 38 7 

trying to put some vim into the lazy country 
fellow, you’ve waked up his heart, at least.” 

Miss Stretton uncovered her face. They 
confronted one another — the bright, sweet girl, 
the handsome youth, aglow with passion. 

The land was poverty-stricken, the promise 
small, but there was freshness, beauty, peace all 
about. “ He is good, he is noble,” she thought. 
There crept into her face something that amazed 
him, but he did not stop to wonder at it. He saw 
fortune sweeping down a shower of gold at his 
feet, and it was no time to question her benefi- 
cence. By a step he lessened the little distance 
between them, and the two shadows melted 
into one along the sunny lane. 

“ You are far brighter than I, Julia,” he mur- 
mured after a while, “ though your reasoning 
has never moved me any. But if you love 
me J — l think you will do whatever you wish 
with me.” 

“ I didn’t mean this, at all,” she returned, 
her lovely face sparkling with tears and smiles 
both at once. In her heart she felt that it was 


388 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

her nature, not his, which the future might 
change. 

Yet, when they concluded to walk on to the 
store, she looked about with a sense of respon- 
sibility and an eye to changes to come, while 
he — his face flushed with happiness — lounged 
beside her in the old indolent way — unreproved. 


APPLE BLOSSOMS 













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APPLE BLOSSOMS 1 


In the clean, large kitchen of a Virginia 
farmhouse sat an old woman alone, knitting. 
She had been pretty once; fifty years ago that 
wrinkled yellow skin had been called “ creamy,” 
and the scant gray hair drawn back under the 
plain cap had been a shower of brown curls. 
And she had coquetted with Judge Holt and 
turned away from him at the last to marry plain 
Nathan Bennett, living with him in rare con- 
tentment for two-score years, and then coming 
to spend the remnant of her days with her 
daughter Ann. Now Ann, too, was gone, and 
only the children were left ; Ben and Nancy, 
and her own adopted child, Lura Ann. 

She smoothed down her neat gray cashmere 
gown, which had been her “ second best ” dress 
since Ann’s death, and leaned back more com- 

1 Copyright, 1896, by “ The Independent.” 

39 1 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


39 2 

fortably against the cushioned surface of the 
splint rocking-chair. 

“ They’re good children,” she said to herself, 
— “excepting Nancy. And she’s not so bad 
as might be.” She cast a satisfied glance at 
the meadows and fields stretching as far as her 
eyes could reach, and then looked lovingly at 
the dwarf apple-trees whose branches pressed 
against the window-shutters. Some of the pink 
blossoms lay on the ledge. It was May. The 
flies were buzzing, the sparrows twittering, as 
they stole cotton from the body of a doll lying 
in the yard and flew up to the roof with it. 

A little girl came around the house and picked 
up the doll, shook it, looked up at the eaves 
where the mother sparrow sat, muttered some- 
thing in an angry tone, and entered the house, 
singing. She sang : “ The apples were ripe 
and beginning to fall, begin-ning to fall ! ” 

“ Ah, yes,” said her grandmother, “ you’ll see 
the apples fall a many times, but I shall scarcely 
see ’em more’n once more — once or twice more, 
at most. Well, well, I’ll be contented to die 


APPLE BLOSSOMS 


393 


if only I can live to see my boy and Lura Ann 

” then she stopped, meeting the child’s 

bright eyes. 

“ Lura Ann is goingfco marry Sackford Moss,” 
said the child. 

“ An angry flush came over the old woman’s 
thin face ; she jerked her knitting, and one of 
her needles fell to the floor. 

“ Now you’re mad, granny, and it’s wicked 
to be mad, so I shan’t hand you your knitting- 
needle,” sang the little girl, in a silvery voice. 

“ Then you’ll have no stockings to wear when 
the biting frost comes ; but you don’t care — 
you don’t care. ’Tis a generation that thinks 
not of the future, but works its will in the pres- 
ent,” moaned the old woman, folding her hands 
together hard. 

“ I’ll hand you your needle if you’ll tell Lura 
Ann to make waffles for supper,” said the sharp 
child ; but her grandmother looked upon her 
with disfavor and did not reply. After a mo- 
ment the little girl came quietly forward and 
laid the needle on her lap, but the old woman 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


394 

did not resume her knitting. She sat with her 
hands folded, and looked at intervals out of 
the window, but with a much-wrinkled brow. 

A door opened, and Lura Ann came in with 
a wide straw hat on. She was tall, slim, and 
fair, with deep gray eyes, heavy-lidded and 
long-lashed, and a little red mouth whose short 
upper lip just raised itself enough to give a 
glimpse of small, pearly teeth. She looked shy 
and sweet. 

“ I am going to town, grandaunt,” she said, 
timidly. “ Shall I bring you some more 
yarn ? ” 

The old woman straightened herself and 
looked sternly at the maiden. “ Be you a-going 
to marry Sackford Moss?” she asked shrilly. 

The pretty lips closed together, and no an- 
swer came from them. 

“ She’s going to buy her wedding-gown now,” 
cried the child, getting up quickly from her 
stool. “ Say, Lura Ann, can I go with you ? ” 

“You stay right hyar, Nancy, and take care 
of granny,” said Lura Ann, with some severity. 


APPLE BLOSSOMS 


395 

Then she went out, murmuring to herself : 
“ They all think the same thing.” 

She walked steadily out through the front 
gate and along the road to town. It was two 
miles distant, and the air was close and dusty. 
Her little black shoes were soon specked, and 
the hem of her dress gathered soil by dipping 
against them. The blue merino scarf over her 
shoulders made her too warm, but she did not 
dare take it off, because it covered a large patch 
under her arm. 

A handsome road-wagon, drawn by a pair of 
bay horses, dashed up suddenly beside her. 
The driver leaned forward and touched his hat 
with an air of devotion. 

“Just in time, Lura Ann,” he cried, gaily. 
“ Come, get in, and I’ll drive you to town and 
wherever else you want to go.” 

“ No, I thank you,” said Lura Ann. 

But he got down and urged her cordially. 
The high, shaded seat looked delightful. The 
fine horses tossed their heads and pawed im- 
patiently. The long road stretched out, hot 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


39 6 

and dusty. Walking she would get to town 
looking like a fright, and it would take much 
longer. The last consideration had a weight 
known to nobody but herself. She let Sack- 
ford help her up into the seat and draw the 
linen duster over her knees. Covertly he ex- 
amined her dress. 

“ Going to shop ? ” he asked ; adding care- 
lessly : “ Burns has got in quite a lot of new 
goods. My sisters were in last week and 
bought a carriage load. But they are nothing 
to what is in the city. I am going to the city 
soon. Emily has been teasing me to buy her 
a lace dress. How pretty you would look in a 
lace dress, Lura Ann, with a little lace bonnet 
on your soft brown hair, trimmed with rose- 
buds just the color of your lips ! ” 

Lura Ann’s cheeks grew pinker than the 
bunch of apple blossoms at her throat. “Your 
sisters and I air different people,” she said, in 
her plaintive, soft voice. 

Sackford feasted his eyes in the blush. The 
veins in his short, thick neck began to swell, 


APPLE BLOSSOMS 


397 


and he shifted the reins to his right hand and 
laid the left across the back of the seat. But 
Lura Ann sat up very straight. 

“Lean back and be comfortable,” he urged. 

“ Take away your arm then, please,” faltered 
Lura Ann. And just then Ben Falconer, com- 
ing across a field in his coarse working clothes, 
saw her drooping with the blush upon her 
cheek and Sackford’s arm about her waist. 
He stood still, and looked after the handsome 
team with a frown and a sigh. Lura Ann had 
not seen him, but Sackford had, and secretly 
blessed the hour. Yet he did not dare kiss 
Lura Ann, as he had intended. 

“Where shall I take you first?” he asked, 
as they entered the town. 

“ To Mr. Wright’s, if you please.” 

“ Of course— he holds some little money be- 
longing to her, I’ve heard,” thought Sack- 
ford. 

“ Don’t wait for me,” she said, but he waited, 
and she was gone a long time. When she came 
out she was pale, as if she had been worried. 


398 SO UTHERN HE A R TS 

Yet she looked resolute, and spoke in a tone 
that had lost all its timidity. 

“ Take me to the old red brick house at the 
end of the street,” she said, eagerly, “ and oh 
be quick ! ” 

“ Why, what’s the attraction in that old 
rookery — a new milliner ? ” jested Sackford. 
He could not conceive the idea of a woman’s 
being interested in anything but clothes. 

Lura Ann’s slim hand closed tightly under 
her shawl about the old purse that had come 
out empty and was now full to bursting with 
currency. Five hundred dollars ! She was of 
age to-day, and had drawn it in her own name, 
every cent. Milliner ! Y es, her hat was shabby, 
but no matter about that. 

Sackford was smiling to himself at her ex- 
citement as he helped her out on to the stone 
step before the old red brick house. She rang 
the bell, and there was no response. Her 
courage seemed to be oozing away as she 
waited. 

“ Better come back,” called Sackford. But 


APPLE BLOSSOMS 


399 


she shook her head and applied herself to the 
bell again. After a moment a shuffling step 
approached and the door opened a few inches, 
allowing a man’s head to be seen. He was old 
and grim-looking. Lura Ann said something 
low and timidly, and after a look of keen scru- 
tiny he let her in. 

Sackford felt an indescribable reluctance to 
have her go in. 

After about five minutes she appeared at the 
door with a paper in her hand, and beckoned 
him. He sprang out quickly, tied his horses, 
and stepped into the hall beside her. 

“ Oh, please see if that is all right,” she 
entreated, putting a legal paper in his hand. 
“You are a lawyer, and he . — this gentleman, 
said to let you see it.” 

Sackford glanced from it to her, saw her total 
unconsciousness of anything out of the way, 
frowned, bit his lip, and examined the document 
with care. 

“ It is all right,” he then said. “ It is a full 
release. Is this what you want? 


400 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


“ Yes, oh, yes, thank you l and I am much 
obliged to you, sir,” she added, sweetly, to the 
grim old man who stood looking on from the 
background. 

He bowed sardonically. “ The obligation is 
on my side, young lady,” he said. * 

“By Jove! It is on somebody else’s side,” 
thought Sackford, as he put Lura Ann back 
into the vehicle ; adding, aloud, “ I don’t like 
this.” 

“ Ah, but you don’t know,” said Lura Ann, 
pleadingly. Her long lashes grew moist. “ It 
is the wish of grandaunt’s heart to have the 
farm free from this mortgage. I always felt as 
if the debt had been made because of me. She 
took me when father died — I was a tiny child 
of three — and oh, they have always been so 
good to me ! ” 

Sackford’s frown did not soften. It was sur- 
prising how surly his shrewd, coarse face be- 
came. “ But whose is the farm ? ” he asked. 
“That release was made out to Ben Falconer.” 

“Yes, but' it is just the same. Grandaunt 


APPLE BLOSSOMS 


401 


made over her share of the farm to him, and 
he cares for all of us. He is the best man in 
the world — my cousin Ben.” 

“ The world — what do you know of the 
world ? ” said Sackford. “ But, see here, Lura 
Ann, do you understand? You have given 
away all your little fortune and left yourself 
penniless.” 

“Yes,” said Lura Ann, simply. There was 
something in her face that checked further 
speech upon his part. She was a foolish, im- 
provident child, and rather too confiding to- 
ward this cousin Ben of hers, but she was very 
pretty — wonderfully pretty — and, after all, he 
had money enough. If five hundred dollars 
had rid her of her sense of obligation, the price 
was cheap. A sigh came here, for Sackford 
Moss did not love to part with money. But 
feeling that he had better put this subject out 
of his mind, he smoothed his face and tried to 
regain his former jovial, easy bearing. Lura 
Ann heard his talk as if it sounded from a far- 
off country. But suddenly there was a ques- 


402 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


tion ; it brought her with a start to a sense of 
her surroundings. His face was bent down 
close to hers ; his breath — she shuddered and 
turned her head. Then the answer came, clear 
and final. What could he do after that but 
whip up the horses and hasten on ? 

At the farm gate he let her down and drove 
away without a backward glance. A spray of 
withered apple blossoms fell from her dress into 
the dust, and his wheel passed over it. 

But she walked up the path with a step like 
the toss of thistledown and a heart as light. 

The old woman was again looking from the 
window. She nodded kindly, but her brow 
was careworn. “ Nancy laid the fire,” she said. 
“ It’s five o’clock. I think it’s going to rain. 
Ben has worked too hard lately. He’s in his 
room with a headache.” 

“ I’ll get tea in a minute,” said Lura Ann. 
“ But first, grandaunt, look hyar ! ” She laid 
off her hat and scarf, and came and knelt on 
the stool at the old woman’s feet. “ See,” and 
she opened the paper. “ It is a release from 


APPLE BLOSSOMS 


403 

the mortgage ! It is my gift to you, grand- 
aunt, bought with the money uncle left me. 
The farm is free ! ” 

The old woman’s hands trembled as she laid 
them on the beautiful young head. “The 
Lord bless you, child ! ” she murmured. But 
in a moment came the after-thought. “ Lura 
Ann, it has taken everything ! ” she exclaimed. 
“You haven’t a dollar left to buy your wed- 
ding-gown ! ” 

The stair door opened, and Ben came down 
from his room, carrying a little hand-mirror in 
a carved wooden frame. He was a fine speci- 
men of young manhood, tall, straight, and 
strong. His dark brown eyes showed intelli- 
gence and depth of feeling. Over his features 
— naturally good — was now cast the reflection 
of that victory which makes a man “ greater 
than he that taketh a city.” He advanced with 
an air of cheerfulness. 

“ Lura Ann, I did not forget that this is 
your birthday. I carved this frame for you 
myself, and I wish you ” 


404 


SO UTHERN HE A R TS 


“ Ben ! ” cried his grandmother. “ Lura 
Ann has bought off the mortgage ! ” 

“ And I’m going to light the fire with it,” 
cried Lura Ann a little tremulously, and spring- 
ing up. 

But Ben came and took it from her quickly. 
He did not comprehend the legal phrases as 
Sackford had done, but he gathered the sense. 
His fine eyes began to brighten and glow as 
they rested on his cousin’s face, now averted 
and blushing. 

“ Lura Ann, let me see your wedding-gown,” 
exclaimed Nancy, coming in ; and Lura Ann 
grew rose red, but she made a violent effort to 
free herself from this wretched mistake. 

“I haven’t got any — I’m not going to have 
any ! ” she cried hysterically, turning to strike 
a match to the fire. “ What do I want of a 
wedding-gown when I’m not going to be 
married ? ” 

“ But Sackford Moss said — — ” began Nancy, 
with staring eyes. 

“ Bother Sackford Moss ! ” said Lura Ann, 


Apple plossoms 


405 

pettishly, trembling with nervousness under 
Ben’s grave eyes. 

“He said he was going to take you away 
from us ! ” finished the persistent child. 

“Well, he isn’t!” said Lura Ann emphati- 
cally. Then she would have liked to flee to her 
room, but Ben was still standing before her. 

“ Nancy,” he said, in singularly happy tones, 
“ g°> get in the young chickens, quick. Don’t 
you see how fast the rain is coming?” And 
Nancy, who always obeyed her brother, went. 

Then Ben, conscious of the whole evening 
before him, let Lura Ann get supper and clear 
it away, before supplementing by a single word 
the tender, hopeful look in his eyes. 

But an hour later, when the shower had 
passed, they stood together on the stoop, which 
was covered with fallen apple blossoms. The 
clouds were gone and the sky was clear blue, 
except for a trail of gold in the west. The 
fields lay green and wet. They looked at sky 
and fields, and at last into each other’s eyes, 
and there their gaze rested. 




406 


SOUTHERN HEARTS 


“ How sweet the air is after the rain,” said 
the old woman. 

“ It is the apple blossoms,” said Ben, from 
the stoop ; and gathering up a handful he let 
them fall in a shower over Lura Ann’s head. 


THE END, 



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